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“Africans sold their own people as slaves” is a stock argument White Americans use when the subject of slavery comes up.
First, simply as an argument of fact it fails:
- Africa was not a country. Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did. Africa, then as now, was made up of different countries. They were no more selling “their own” than, say, “Europeans” were killing “their own” during the Holocaust.
And it overlooks a few other things:
- Most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it. But because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.
- The Transatlantic slave trade was on a much greater scale than anything the Africans or anyone else ever did in the history of slavery. Countries were destroyed and millions died. Over 12 million were sold in less than 400 years, something so huge that it changed the genetic map of the world.
- The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its other ills, was not that. Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade. So slavery in places like Haiti, Barbados and America was much more cruel.
As a moral argument it fails too:
- It uses what I call the Arab Trader argument: it excuses an evil of one’s own past by finding the same sort of evil done by others. Whites sold slaves, but Africans and Arab traders did too! Which, morally speaking, is at the same level as an eight-year-old saying, “He did it too!” when caught doing something bad. We do not accept this argument from eight-year-olds, nor from bank robbers or wife beaters. “Africans did it too!” is no better.
But it is as a derailing argument that it comes into its own:
Its main purpose is to draw attention away from what whites did by turning the tables. That part of their past makes White Americans uncomfortable. But instead of facing up to it, they have built up defences against it:
- Africans sold their own people as slaves.
- Africans are still selling slaves.
- Arab traders sold slaves too.
- Slavery goes back thousands of years.
- All races have practised slavery.
- Whites stopped slavery.
- My family never owned slaves.
- That was Ancient History.
- You are living in the past.
- Get over it!
- It was the times.
- Slavery did not make economic sense.
- Whites got to where they are by their own hard work
- Blacks are better off in America than in Africa
- Africans were savages.
And on and on.
Why not just face up to it? Because part of their sense of self worth is built on being white and how whites are better than everyone else, particularly blacks. But it is a huge lie, a lie that can only be maintained by not looking at their past – and present – squarely and honestly.
See also:
- Transatlantic slave trade
- “Africa is a country”
- other stock defences against slavery:
- reading while white: history and news
- How to argue like a white racist
Let’s take these points one at a time:
1) Africa was not a country. Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did.
Sure, no doubt. And yet it was a sin for white people to sell folks who weren’t “their people”. If the argument is that you can sell political, religious and social “Others” as slaves, then that’s valid for both Europeans and Africans, isn’t it? And if it’s not valid for the one, it isn’t valid for the other.
Secondly, both Europeans and Africans did indeed “sell their own”: criminals were routinely sold into slavery on both continents.
Most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it. But because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.
“Most”? Source, please. Slavery was VERY common throughout sub-saharan Africa, as it was in every single human civilization before the industrial revolution. Those few African peoples who DIDN’T have slaves mostly didn’t have cities or agriculture. The San peoples spring to mind.
The Transatlantic slave trade was on a much greater scale than anything the Africans or anyone else ever did in the history of slavery.
Actually, no. More slaves died enroute to slave ports than got shipped. The proper way to argue this is to say that without European buyers, the massive AFRICAN chattel slave trade simply would not have existed.
The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its other ills, was not that. Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade.
This is a bit of a red herring as “racism”, in the strict sense, only came about halfway through the slave trade’s existence. It’s also a bit of a nit to pick. African’s didn’t have a concept of race, but they most CERTAINLY had the concept of the degraded Other and the sense that they could do just as they pleased with the degraded other. I don’t think that slaves sacrificed by the King of Dahomé got any moral or emotional sustenance from the fact that the guy doing the killing saw them as impure scum, but not as a different subspecies.
It uses what I call the Arab Trader argument: it excuses an evil of one’s own past by finding the same sort of evil done by others.
But isn’t that what this whole attempt to recover African slavery as somehow “not as bad” as other forms of slavery is PRECISELY doing, Abagond? 😀
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Nice post, I just have to note something about this:
The Transatlantic slave trade was racist. The African slave trade, for all of its other ills, was not that. Neither was the Greek and Roman slave trade. So slavery in places like Haiti, Barbados and America was much more cruel.
I am not sure if slavery being more cruel is a consequence of this type of slavery being racist. What I’m saying is, other reasons for slavery (ethnic difference, religious difference, seeing enslaved as barbarians, etc.) are no better (or worse) than race as a reason for slavery.
So if this type of slavery was more cruel it wasn’t because the oppressors used (invented, in fact) race as a reason behind it. Using any other reason (ethnic difference, religion, etc.) would be the same.
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“If the argument is that you can sell political, religious and social “Others” as slaves, then that’s valid for both Europeans and Africans, isn’t it? And if it’s not valid for the one, it isn’t valid for the other.”
Did I miss something or did abagond state that slavery on the continent of Africa wasn’t bad/awful/etc?
“Secondly, both Europeans and Africans did indeed “sell their own”: criminals were routinely sold into slavery on both continents.”
I read that as meaning they weren’t selling their those of their own ethnic groups. Of course, since there was no “African” or even “Ghanaian/Angolan/Senegalese” at the time, they weren’t selling their “own”. Either way, you’re right that criminals (even of the same ethnic group) were sold as well.
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To Thad^
To the topic: I’d just tell the person to look up the origin of the word slave, if they want to play the tit-for-tat game.
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It was fairly common for Africans to keep other Africans (as in prisoners of war) as slaves, but this was nothing like the slavery that took place in the US, Caribbean, West Indies, South America. Slavery in Africa was more of an indentured servitude with a beginning and an end. Many slaves ended up marrying into the families they served. What’s important to note here is that slaves maintained their humanity and were not “born into” slavery. The child of a slave was born free.
So flash over to the British, Americans, French and Portuguese coming to buy slaves. The slavery Africans know of has not included vicious brutality and dehumanization. The captives have the same idea of slavery and believe they’re going to be treated the same way they’ve treated their slaves. They will serve their time, and then they’ll get on with their lives. They believe they will go wherever they’re going, and they’ll work and live there. But that is not what happens, as we know.
This information is something I’ve heard in my Black literature class, my African-American literature class, and I’ve recently read it again in a book called Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture by Howard Dodson, Amiri Baraka, Gail Lumet Buckley, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Annette Gordon-Reed.
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I don’t think what Abagond is saying that it is a sin for one race or people to sell folks who weren’t “their people” and not for another. I think he is saying that the white argument is always that, if Africans sold each other to the whites, then the slave trade in America was justified.
But the outcome of that operation, which scale and magnitude has gone unsurpassed, has had a profound effect on 38 million people in America. Not just because of slavery, that was just the starting point. But because white supremecy would not allow themselves to see blacks as humans and it carried on long after the slave trade was abolished.
Although the slave trade was abolished, slavery was not. So, those whites who wanted to do the “cool” thing at the time and be “progressive” said ” Sure, we’ll stop bringing slaves over from Africa, but I’ll be damned if I give up the ones raising my children and tending my land.”
Had slavery been just slavery and halted when it was said to have been, i think the outcome would have been much different. But we all know how that story goes. Slavery ended in 1865. The oldest man alive is 114 ears old. He was born in 1896. Only a mere 31 years before that man was born were black people still “legally” considered slaves. I bet his memory is ful of amazingly shocking things.
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But the outcome of that operation, which scale and magnitude has gone unsurpassed, has had a profound effect on 38 million people in America. Not just because of slavery, that was just the starting point. But because white supremecy would not allow themselves to see blacks as humans and it carried on long after the slave trade was abolished.
Although the slave trade was abolished, slavery was not. So, those whites who wanted to do the “cool” thing at the time and be “progressive” said ” Sure, we’ll stop bringing slaves over from Africa, but I’ll be damned if I give up the ones raising my children and tending my land.” (and don’t forget “the ones I serially rape and then call sluts and wh*res afterward even if she was only 11 or 12 at the time and I was 30 or 40”)
Had slavery been just slavery and halted when it was said to have been, i think the outcome would have been much different. But we all know how that story goes.
THIS. Interesting how many wish to obfuscate this.
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I think the retort to “Africans sold their own people as slaves!” is that “Africans didn’t write slavery into the US Constitution.”
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@ Claude.
Word. Also, black people are over 50 million in America. And in 2008 the oldest man in the world recorded up until then died @ age 137. So when white people whine about slavery being over a hundred years ago, it’s really annoying.
*sigh* ’tis why I developed fashion tips.
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Great post Abagond
Nobody seems to ever mention how hard Africans fought to get white slave traders of their land, but who had the guns?
As for the whole slavery was such a long time a go. puh-leezeee. Slavery was about 400 year give or take (depending where you lived and when your town/ country started acting right) Afro Americans/Carribean/Latinos have only been out of slavery for 100+ years not even half the time.
It may seem so long ago becasue how far we have come but it is really not.
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Excellent Post.
“Why not just face up to it? Because part of their sense of self worth is built on being white and how whites are better than everyone else, particularly blacks. But it is a huge lie, a lie that can only be maintained by not looking at their past – and present – squarely and honestly.”
Truth!
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This is a common derail. It’s like the excuse you hear in school when kids say, “But they were doing it too! How come I’m getting in trouble?” As if morality is based on how many other people are doing the wrong thing.
That said, I think it is important to remember that for all the evil that Europeans and Americans perpetrated through the slave trade and slave industry, that it wasn’t something white people just invented out of thin air. I get the idea here sometimes that some blacks think slavery is something that only white people were nasty enough to do. The fact that Africans were involved in slavery needs to be kept in mind; it shows that all races are capable of such things.
White people just had the means at the time to take it to a much further level than Africans did. Which doesn’t excuse whites; it just shows that the potential for wickedness is a part of the human condition, and doesn’t discriminate between the races.
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Did I miss something or did abagond state that slavery on the continent of Africa wasn’t bad/awful/etc?
Has he stated that somewhere? Because he certainly doesn’t state it in this post.
To the topic: I’d just tell the person to look up the origin of the word slave, if they want to play the tit-for-tat game.
Slav, AKA Mira’s people.
Slavery in Africa was more of an indentured servitude with a beginning and an end. Many slaves ended up marrying into the families they served.
First of all, that’s not necessarily true. Just like the Africans had no notion of chattel slavery, they had no notion of “indentured servitude”. Slavery was formally for life, but like in chattel slavery, there were ways of getting manumitted.
Secondly, that “marriage” was FORCED. When that sort of thing happened in the context of European slave-owning, it was called RAPE. Let’s not gussy up sexual subordination, OK? I mean, I’m the guy here who normally says it’s hard to call 17th century mating customs “rape” by our current standards because women were not understood to own their sexuality.
But if you define rape as a woman being forced, against her will, often violently, to have sex, then that is indeed what most of these “marriages” were. Neither in Europe nor in Africa did the masse marry for love in the 17th century. These marriages were business deals which basically meant owning a woman’s reproductive capacity.
So please… if you’re the kind of person who thinks slave/master relationships in the Americas were necessarily rape because the woman had no choice, don’t try to make slave/master relationships in Africa into some sort of loving and peaceful ideal.
[roll eyes]
You need to stop reading so much lit, Victoria, and read a little more African history.
As for the belief that slaves in the Americas lost their humanity, again, please read more history. One of the operative myths that Europeans used to justify slavery is that it saved slaves’ souls by making them Christian. Every Spanish and Portuguese slave ship that loaded in Africa had a priest baptizing the slaves that went in. When they got here in Rio, they were subject to catechism lessons while they awaited buyers in the Valongo slave mart.
You don’t go through that sort of effort if you feel that the people you are enslaving AREN’T human, Victoria. You are projecting 21st century values back on the 17th century. there was no doubt in the slavers’ minds that their wares were human.
And this “slavery in Africa was indentured servitude” is bulls**. Do me a favor, Victoria: read ONE history book on slavery in Africa. Just one.
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@ Thaddeus:
As for the belief that slaves in the Americas lost their humanity, again, please read more history. One of the operative myths that Europeans used to justify slavery is that it saved slaves’ souls by making them Christian. Every Spanish and Portuguese slave ship that loaded in Africa had a priest baptizing the slaves that went in. When they got here in Rio, they were subject to catechism lessons while they awaited buyers in the Valongo slave mart.
You don’t go through that sort of effort if you feel that the people you are enslaving AREN’T human, Victoria. You are projecting 21st century values back on the 17th century. there was no doubt in the slavers’ minds that their wares were human.
The degree to which the slavers recognised the humanity of Africans varied among individuals and from place to place, no? White colonial attitudes were not monolithic. There were plenty of debates about whether or not Africans had souls. And while most probably would have recognised Africans as human, they weren’t recognised as “properly human” like whites were. More like the lowest rung on the human ladder.
By the way:
[roll eyes]
And this “slavery in Africa was indentured servitude” is bulls**. Do me a favor, Victoria: read ONE history book on slavery in Africa. Just one.
Do you really not realise why some on this blog see you as arrogant and condescending?
I just point this out because you make so many intelligent points, but they get forgotten because everyone is too busy getting mad at you.
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@ Thaddeus: You really do make some snarky comments. Not to be rude, but I brace myself for one every time I see your name in the “Comments” section.
But that’s not why I’m posting. This is a bit off topic, but slavery still exists. It exists in every country with a significant population (including all 50 states of America) in the form of bondage and human trafficking, and others. (E. Benjamin Skinner)
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The degree to which the slavers recognised the humanity of Africans varied among individuals and from place to place, no?
Considering that about 8-10 of those 12 million slaves were brought over by extremely Catholic Portuguese and Brazilian and Spanish slavers, I think we’re safe in presuming that this was more the norm than the exception.
The idea that Africans weren’t humans was believed by a very small minority of North American extremists in the late 19th century. It’s silly to project that group’s beliefs off on slavers across the Atlantic, over 500 years of history. “Race” as a concept really didn’t even get off the ground until the 19th century, four centuries after europeans began buying slaves in Africa.
And while most probably would have recognised Africans as human, they weren’t recognised as “properly human” like whites were.
ES, you’re presuming humanistic spirit among whites which just didn’t exist. You seem to think that whites believed in sort of an all-reaching humanity and brotherhood among themselves. It is quite clear that they didn’t until the post-Napoleonic period. The Irish are proof positive of this, but also the way in which the English and the Iberians saw each other: “heretic scum worthy of death by torture” was the least of it. And while you’re at it, why don’t you take a look at how England and France treated each others’ prisoners of war during the Napoleonic conflicts.
Does it look like they considered each other to be “properly human” to you…?
Do you really not realise why some on this blog see you as arrogant and condescending?
It’s all in where you stand, ES. Frankly, I think it’s arrogant and condescending to qualify African slavery as a form of “marriage” and to presume, based on that, that it was somehow “better” than other forms of slavery. I think it’s arrogant and condescending to think that a class or two in literature suddenly makes one qualified to make blanket comparisons regarding different forms of slavery around the world. That sort of thing grates on my nerves just as much as my “arrogance and condescension” grates on other people’s nerves.
The problem here is that I’m going against the dogmatic grain. If I weren’t, few people would have any problems whatsoever with my arrogance. If I were to post something like “Yeah, those white people were evil bastards and if you’re saying they weren’t basically devils in disguise, you’re either a fool or a villain”, more than half the posters here wouldn’t even blink. Certainly, the only person who’d call me out on my arrogance would be the odd white passerthrough. You wouldn’t hear word one from Abagond, Ank, Witch, Jasmin…
So given the fact that arrogance seems to be the norm here, I’m just rolling with it. Mira’s probably the least arrogant poster here, along with yourself, but my patience for bulls*** isn’t as high as yours, especially when it’s BS wrapped in self-serving self-righteousness.
I mean, let’s condemn the 18th century translatlantic slave trade. Ooh! What a bold and radical position to take, close to two centuries after Wilburforce. [roll eyes]
I mean I sometimes wonder if the people who do this put half as much thought into, say, the wars in Iraq and Afganistan…?
I just point this out because you make so many intelligent points, but they get forgotten because everyone is too busy getting mad at you.
Haters gonna hate. It’s not like I’m getting paid to respect peoples’ fantasies, ES.
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I love when whites mention Arabs, because according to the U.S. census, Arabs are white and are classified as such. Lo!
Saying an Arab sold slaves is put into context when you consider that the U.S. classifies Arabs as whites.
While the kingdom of Dahome benefitted from slavery, it was the exception and not the rule.
Abagond is right on point with these ones.
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Y’know, I don’t hear many white racists mentioning Arabs, though. The first time I heard that was here, in fact. Most white racists I’ve heard go right to the point: Africans bought and sold Africans. Check out a site like, say, Stromfront, and see if they’re using the “Arab” argument much on their boards. They don’t.
By the way, Dahome was not the exception. Pretty much every coastal African city-state and nation benefitted from slavery at one point or antoher in its 500 years and many of the people of the interior as well. Dahomé actually started off OPPOSING slavery and then got into it later. Dahomé’s exceptionality comes from its exceptionally horrific forms of slavery in the 19th century. Let’s just say it was not a place the Teletubbies would have felt at all comfortable in.
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@Thaddeus: Attempting to put African slavery on the same level as White-European slavery won’t work, because they were never on the same level. It’s a fact that one was far crueler.
Choosing between them is a lesser of two evils debate, and your attempt to make ‘white slave traders/masters’ more humane than they actually were is far past condescending, but aggravating, really.
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Also, Africans did not really benefit from the slave trade. The ‘benefits’ we’re talking about were very material at best. The loss of people, even from their own tribes, was very costly to them.
So, even arguing that they ‘benefited’ from slavery is tricky.
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@ Thad:
I hear ya. I’m just of the opinion that the message is being obscured by its method of delivery.
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@ES [shrugs] Hey, I’m not a political militant. The message is what it is: I’m not particularly trying to bend people to my way of thinking.
@Mel
Attempting to put African slavery on the same level as White-European slavery won’t work, because they were never on the same level. It’s a fact that one was far crueler.
Fact, is it?
Would you like to tell me how you’re m,easuring that, Mel? Because for the life of me I can’t see how you’re making these nice little distinctions between one form of rape, torture and murder and another.
Now, where the Europeans really were DIFFERENT was in linking slavery to a proto-capitalist form of production. This changed the form and the scale of slavery and insomuch as a million people ebslaved is worse that 100,000, it made slavery worse.
But “crueler”?
Mel, seriously: READ some good histories about African slavery that are written by people without an axe to grind. It was bad enough, any way you want to cut it.
Y’know, we talk about white people trying to “excuse” chattel slavery by bringing up the African variant, but it certainly seems to be an item of faith among many black people that African slavery was somehow a nice walk in the park. Rather like getting hauled off ina an elopement, according to some folks posting here. [roll eyes]
Choosing between them is a lesser of two evils debate, and your attempt to make ‘white slave traders/masters’ more humane than they actually were is far past condescending, but aggravating, really.
So why are you maing PRECISELy thata rgument then, Mel? You won’t see me here defending chattel slavery as “better”, and yet here you are, making the argument that the African form of slavery was less cruel somehow.
I mean seriously, Mel, you’re the one making utopian distinctions between evil behaviors, not me.
The ‘benefits’ we’re talking about were very material at best.
As opposed to the Europeans, who somehow “spiritually benefitted” from slavery…?
Mel, slavery is basically for one thing and one thing only, whether in Africa or Europe: it’s a way of forceably acquiring another person’s labor. One does this for MATERIAL gain. So claiming that Africans didn’t benefit from slavery because they only benefitted from it materially rather misses the enitre point of slavery in the first place.
Now, if you want to argue that Africa LOST more than it gained from slavery, that I will buy. Bascially, Africa raised people to adulthood, using resources to do so, then saw those resources lost along with said people’s ability to work. So yeah, socially and materially speaking, there’s no doubt that slavery was a drain on the continent as a whole.
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Thad,
Umm, yea, because everyone welcomed African Black Militant with open arms.
You certainly seem to have a lot of patience for your own bullsh*t, but I guess someone has to, hmm? I find it mildly entertaining how often you forget to pick up your face (and creepy that you have some kind of obsession with Ankhesen), but otherwise, I skip your monologues.
For someone who claims to hate “dogma” (is that your vocab word of the year or what?) and assumptions, you sure get a lot of pleasure making an *ass* of yourself. I guess the tumbleweeds rolling around your own blog get boring.
I’ve played you enough times for one lifetime, but if you’re a sucker for punishment I’d be happy to do it again. 🙂
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Almost forgot–maybe you didn’t get enough attention as a kid, but on a blog, people aren’t obligated to give a sh*t about what you think/say. For someone who feels so put upon and beaten-down, you sure seem to care whether people react to what you say. It’s a blog, not a roll call (duh). And since I don’t see you responding to every comment on every post as if your opinion is *crucial* to the topic at hand, it’s a logic fail to apply that assumption to other people.
Really, at this point you should just invest in spatulas. I hear they’re good at scraping droopy flesh off linoleum. 🙂
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@Mel, seriously: READ some good histories about African slavery that are written by people without an axe to grind. It was bad enough, any way you want to cut it.
You mean books written by Eurocentric, white apologists with condescending attitudes like you?
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Y’know, we talk about white people trying to “excuse” chattel slavery by bringing up the African variant, but it certainly seems to be an item of faith among many black people that African slavery was somehow a nice walk in the park. Rather like getting hauled off ina an elopement, according to some folks posting here.
You’re not getting the point (or you don’t want to.) You’re doing exactly what Abagond suggests white people do: bring in African/Arab slave traders in an effort to turn the conversation away from European slavery.
‘Excuse chattel slavery?’ Really? Let’s not stay here and pretend that you would’ve given a damn about ‘poor’ Africans enslaving each other in Africa.
In the eyes of Europeans, especially 19th century Europeans, Africans were primitive, sub-human savages.
This ‘it’s a human thing’ argument is nothing more than than an excuse to “avoid the guilt” and soften the blow to the African slave trader argument. It’s the equivalent of Dr. Laura, Don Imus and a slew of others who get caught using the n-word, turning around and saying “rappers use the n-word, too.” They don’t listen to rap music. The “rappers” argument is nothing more than excuse.
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Thad said:
“Now, where the Europeans really were DIFFERENT was in linking slavery to a proto-capitalist form of production. This changed the form and the scale of slavery and insomuch as a million people ebslaved is worse that 100,000, it made slavery worse.
But “crueler”?”
Vin responds:
Yes it was far more cruel!
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Thaddeus,
For future reference, so you don’t waste your time making long comments directed at me, please note that I don’t even remotely respect your opinion. I scroll past your comments without reading, and have for quite some time, long before I began leaving comments myself. I saw my name mentioned in your post but since I don’t actually care what you have to say, as in the past it has been consistently irrelevant to me, I didn’t read it. I don’t make comments that I can’t unwaveringly stand behind. If you disagree, it really makes no difference.
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*headdesk* Was my comment seriously just twisted to boost an egotistical maniac’s agenda? I genuinely hate dealing with the willfully obtuse.
My mentioning of marriage within the families of slave owners and slaves in Africa was to illustrate a) the truth, and b) that slave owning families in Africa still saw their slaves as human, to the extent to which they valued them as people and saw them fit to become part of their families if they wanted to. This does not make slavery better in Africa. Even being an indentured servant is terrible. The difference is that there’s an end to it.
You have to be really interested in furthering your own agenda to say that is likening African slavery to a marriage. Reaching much? Unraveling an entire discussion based on that is really respectful to people who aren’t here to puff their chests up on themselves and their perceived knowledge. Give me a break. “Waa I can’t handle a discussion unless I’m dominating it and seen as the smartest! *flailing arms* “
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I think the thing here is to separate issues: are we talking about the slavery in the US and its history and the whites arguments to downplay that, or are we talking about the general history of the slavery?
I think the topic here is the way these arguments are used to somehow make slavery in the US to seem less dramatic/terrible and how some whites are using them in such manner.
I don’t think any sensible person can deny that some african tribes and/or nations participated in this trade. That is historical fact. As a matter of fact, some eastern tribes had been slave trading with arabs and romans and egyptians centuries before the first western european commercial slave traders ever showed up to the western shores.
If you want some facts, visit the old slave trading stations in Sansibar etc. I’ve been there and nobody there says anything else than that the locals (africans) were trading slaves from the inner parts of the continent with the arabs and chinese and moguls and what have you. And the guys who will tell you this are local african historians, not white wiseasses.
And about the soul saving measures, Thad: the holy inquisition and the holy spanish inquisition believed that burning a sinner on a stake was an act of mercy. It shortened the time spent in purgatory, see. Therefore some really humanistic inquisitors asked the executoners to roast the victims longer by less flames. It was so merciful to shorten their misery in the ever after.
We can not look at these things from any other perspective than from our own. So even if the slave traders babtised african slaves, it was not necessary an act of mercy from the slaves point if view. Nor it is from ours. We can try to understand why those guys were thinking that way, how they were thinking at that time, but it does not give any excuse or lessen the crime from our own point of view.
Otherwise we might say that the Holocaust was ok, because it was ok in the minds of the nazis. The Stalins reign of terror with its millions of victims was ok, because it was necessary in the eyes of Joe “The Big Boss” Dzugashvili.
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@Jasmin
Umm, yea, because everyone welcomed African Black Militant with open arms.
Yeah, I will admit that people who end up arguing about how Africans are biologically superior because the Space Brothers made them so tend to fall flat on their face here. But extremely arrogant comments get made here everyday and meet with less than a shrug, as long as they don’t violate any of the basic points people learned in their AfroAm 101 classes.
For someone who feels so put upon and beaten-down, you sure seem to care whether people react to what you say.
Jasmin, I hardly feel put upon or beaten down, though I’m sure you’d be happy to help make me feel that way. I am simply responding to ES’ question regarding why I’m not nicer here. And I think you’ve just given an excellent display of one of the reasons why I don’t bother.
@Mel
You mean books written by Eurocentric, white apologists with condescending attitudes like you?
How about books written by African historians themselves? Or is anyone who does not come to your apriori conclusions about history understood to be “eurocentric”?
Y’know Mel, the more I hang out here on Abagond, the more I’m beginning to think that “Eurocentric” is simply a weasel word used by young Americans which means “I do not want to read or think about Africa, I’d rather just fantasize about it”. If you really were concerned about eurocentric views of Africa, you’d be reading all you could in order to effectively critique it. But like most Americans, you seem to think that reading books which don’t agree with you will somehow taint your ideological purity.
You’re not getting the point (or you don’t want to.) You’re doing exactly what Abagond suggests white people do: bring in African/Arab slave traders in an effort to turn the conversation away from European slavery.
This is actually either a simple lie, or simply stupidity, given my repeated insistance that European slavery was as horrible and much more wide-spread than African slavery and so provably worse.
Apparently, you can’t even adequately read what people are saying, Mel, for I have made no claims whatsoever to”turn the conversation away from European slavery”, even though I’d be fully justified in doing so, given that this topic is quite clearly about African slavery.
Vin responds:
Yes it was far more cruel!
How so, Vin? I’d be interested in hearing how you’re measuring that. What pain-ometer are you using there?
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My mentioning of marriage within the families of slave owners and slaves in Africa was to illustrate a) the truth, and b) that slave owning families in Africa still saw their slaves as human, to the extent to which they valued them as people and saw them fit to become part of their families if they wanted to.
This comment is an excellent example of the sort of historically ignorant, soft-thinking that surrounds this topic.
Vickie seems to hear the word “family” and automatically think in terms of 21st century American nuclear families which are (ideologically at least) based on notions of love, reciprocity and mutual respect.
“Marriage” in many societies means nothing of the kind. It can in fact mean “You ass is mine byotch, as well as any brats which you pump out” and that’s exactly what this meant in the case of much of the family and clan-based slavery that was going on in Africa. This is no more a proof of slave-owners belief in the essential humanity of their captives than a white slave-owner’s belief that if he raped a slave woman and got her pregnant, he’d have another fieldhand. Oh, and slaves in the Americas were routinely considered to be “part of the family” – especially houseslaves. Family property is like that, you know.
So why Vickie thinks “marriage” is such a boon in this case is beyond me, given that marriage itself has generally meant a form of slavery in many cultures, with the woman clearly understood as her husband’s property. All marriage meant in the African context is that one guy got to rape the woman and was the legal controller of her kids. For the woman concerned, it was no ameliorating factor.
And let me point out one thing that should be obvious, but which Vickie apparently doesn’t know or understand: these societies weren’t monogamous: a man could have as many “wives” as he wanted.
In the Americas, Christian monogamy meant that there’d be no marriages to slaves. If it weren’t for that, I’m sure there’d have been many slaveowners who would have been quite happy to toss yet another yoke around slave women’s necks. A woman who was juridical property AND could be treated as the legal mother of one’s off-spring if one so wished? What a great deal!
The proof of that particular pudding is here in Brazil, where slaveowners had a lot more social, economic and cultural freedom than in the U.S. In spite of the “no marriage” rule, many slave owners recognized their offspring with slave women, at least as far as it interested them. And why did it interest them? because absent a large class of poor whites, someone had to take over the intermediate role of slave manager: behold the Brazilian mulato.
Ironically enough, Brazilian slave-holding was thus much closer to African patterns, which also used slave women to generate a class of people who were beholden to their fathers and no one else.
Why did African slavery need to do this?
Precisely because many African family patterns are matrilineal: the children follow the mother (and, more to the point, her brothers, their uncles). If you are a powerful male, then, your children are not yours but your brother-in-laws. If you have children by a slave woman, however, they are yours and only yours: their only way up in society is through YOU and your powerstructure.
Why this is considered to be a more “human” and “less cruel” form of slavery is beyond me. The effects of this sort of system, as opposed to the effects of the more Europeanized system, can be seen today in the way Brazil and the U.S. deal with race. I certainly wouldn’t consider one or the other system to be better or more or less cruel: s*** stinks no matter what nuts and fiber is mixed in with it.
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I think the topic here is the way these arguments are used to somehow make slavery in the US to seem less dramatic/terrible and how some whites are using them in such manner.
Fair enough, Sam. But look above: Vindicator, Vickie and Mel are all arguing that African slavery was less dramatic/terrible and their understanding about it is basically as shallow as the average white American’s views on slavery in general.
So why is this a white thing?
What seems to be the case is that both racist whites and self-proclaimed anti-racists will try to PLAY DOWN one sort of slavery in order to make the other look better. When Vickie, Vinny and Mel are here wailing and woeing European slavery while claiming that African slavery was somehow more “family values oriented” and thus “less cruel”, they are engaged in exactly the sort of thing they claim to get angry about when they see white people doing it.
I mean, are we against slavery, or are we against only those sorts of slavery which conveniently fit our dogmas about our identities and heritage?
I’m against slavery, period, and you don’t see me making up tales that one or another form of it was better or less cruel.
Vickie, Vinny and Mel apparently are able to make that sort of distinction… EXACTLY as you claim white racists do.
And this is a problem. For to say, as Abagond does, that African slavery doesn’t excuse European slavery is correct and proper. But as we’ve seen above, there are plenty of people who do just the opposite, using European slavery to excuse African slavery.
And when that happens, why should any white guy who doesn’t have your prior knowledge of this debate conclude that European slavery was different or worse? He’s going to sit there and see Stormfront blathering away on one side, look over to the other and see Vickie claiming that African slavery was a rerun of “All in the Family”, and conclude that BOTH sides are ful of USDA-approved horses***.
And about the soul saving measures, Thad: the holy inquisition and the holy spanish inquisition believed that burning a sinner on a stake was an act of mercy. It shortened the time spent in purgatory, see. Therefore some really humanistic inquisitors asked the executoners to roast the victims longer by less flames. It was so merciful to shorten their misery in the ever after.
I think you’re confusing saying “they believed slaves were human” with “they were humanists”, Sam. I made the first argument, not the second. The whole “torture them to death” motiff has absolutely no logic to it unless you believe, beforehand, that the victim was human. That, of course, does not mean that these people believed human beings were born with certain inalienable rights as distinct individuals, which is what a humanist would believe.
We can not look at these things from any other perspective than from our own.
You better believe we can. In fact, you’re doing it RIGHT NOW.
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😀 okay thad. But I still think that we can TRY to see their points of view but ultimately what we have on any subject it is our subjective opinion, albeit some are more studied and thoughed trough than others.
Yeah, they believed they were saving souls of humans. That is true.
And no, there is no excuse on any slavery, no matter hwre and by whom.
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But I still think that we can TRY to see their points of view but ultimately what we have on any subject it is our subjective opinion, albeit some are more studied and thoughed trough than others.
Post-modern relativist mush which you don’t REALLY believe Sam. If you do, tell yourself that you can fly and jump off the roof.
Go on.
Or hell, why don’t you go fix your car’s brakes on your own? 😀
Yes, there are opinions and yes, there is variance but objective reality – or something very much like it – does indeed exist and we can make rational statements about it.
“Slavery in Africa/the Americas was less cruel” is not a rational statement because it is not backed up by any objective evidence whatsoever, but simply by its proponents’ wishful thinking and ignorance.
Now, I’m sure we could find some slaveries that were less cruel, if we really went at it, but you’re not going to be able to apply that adjective to continetal systems which worked over half a millenium or more.
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“But as we’ve seen above, there are plenty of people who do just the opposite, using European slavery to excuse African slavery.”
I don’t think anybody here is trying to excuse African slavery. All that they are saying is that as they understand it, slavery as practised by Africans was not as bad as the way it was practised by whites. Not as bad, but still bad.
I’m with Abagond on this one. Racism added an extra dimension to US/European slavery and set it apart from African slavery; the construction of race led to black people being dehumanized.
“I don’t think that slaves sacrificed by the King of Dahomé got any moral or emotional sustenance from the fact that the guy doing the killing saw them as impure scum, but not as a different subspecies.”
Yes, knowing that you’re about to be killed sucks no matter what the context, we all know that. But I would think that the emotional/psychological effects of slavery extend far beyond the trauma of being put to death. Heck, I’m a black person living in a black body years after slavery ended, and even I still feel the sting every now and then.
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Thad said:
How so, Vin? I’d be interested in hearing how you’re measuring that. What pain-ometer are you using there?
Vin Responds:
Pain-ometer! Who says being cruel involves pain!?
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I think, the problem is that, as in all human institutions, you’ll find that there was a broad gradient of understanding and application of the institution. It really depended on the immediate environment, the customs, and finally, on the individuals who impose define slavery, in their particular sphere of influence.
There were certainly slave owners on BOTH sides of the Atlantic, who dehumanized their slaves. Just as certain is the fact that there were slave owners, on both sides, who were relatively benign in their approach to the institution. History is replete with examples of both, sometimes living only miles apart from one another.
“I’m with Abagond on this one. Racism added an extra dimension to US/European slavery and set it apart from African slavery; the construction of race led to black people being dehumanized.”
Yes, but this opinion ignores the fact that say… religion, language, or tribe can be used JUST as effectively to dehumanize! Also, many people felt about tribes the way we feel about “race” today. People who were in your tribe where “your people” not anyone who happened to have brown skin.
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Snailly…
I don’t think anybody here is trying to excuse African slavery. All that they are saying is that as they understand it, slavery as practised by Africans was not as bad as the way it was practised by whites.
Sorry, but if a white made any similar statement at all, it would be understood as an excuse for slavery.
You can’t have two weights and two measures on this.
Now, I’m open to the idea that there might be “better” or “worse” slaveries, but that has to be really looked into and studied and I can’t see any way anyone could make that sort of blanket comparison between two halves of a system which functioned over half the globe for 500 years.
I’m with Abagond on this one. Racism added an extra dimension to US/European slavery and set it apart from African slavery; the construction of race led to black people being dehumanized.
Let’s break that down.
1) The construction of race did indeed add a different dimension to slavery in the Americas, but that only happened CENTURIES into the game. In fact, if you’re talking about the specific variant of race ideology that cast blacks as sub-humans, that only occurred AFTER slavery.
2) Race ideology, as a whole, doesn’t cast races as subhumans. Certain branches of the ideology does, but these only became popular post-Darwin with the idea of blacks as underevolved. Even then, very, very few people believed blacks were not human.
3) You do not need the race concept to treat people as if they were degraded Others – which is by and large how black people were treated in slavery. Africans did this. Europeans did this. Everyone did this.
If you want to argue the exceptionalism of the transatlantic slave trade, it has to do with scale and capitalism, not with some sort of exceptional dehumanization of blacks.
The sad fact of the matter is you don’t need to dehumanize people to torture them. Very much the opposite, in fact.
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Vinnie:
Vin Responds:
Pain-ometer! Who says being cruel involves pain!?
Oh, jeezis… [roll eyes] Talk about trying to weasle your way out of a losing argument.
OK, then, Vinnie: t3ell us about your cruelty-o-meter.
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@King
Yes, but this opinion ignores the fact that say… religion, language, or tribe can be used JUST as effectively to dehumanize! Also, many people felt about tribes the way we feel about “race” today. People who were in your tribe where “your people” not anyone who happened to have brown skin.
Right on!
This “ah, but it didn’t have race” argument is so much BS as it seems to presume that race is a necessary and sufficient component of dehumanization. In fact, it is neither.
The vast majority of scientific racists had no doubts at all that blacks were human. The whole race concept is that of a SUBSPECIES, meaning that the HUMAN SPECIES is divided into several biological subspecies: white, black, red, what have you.
You are going to have to search long and hard to find a racist during slavery who claimed that blacks weren’t human, let alone one who ahd any influence. About the only ones I can think of are a handful of extremely radical loons in the U.S. south in the years immediately before and after the Civil War.
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Thad says:
“Oh, jeezis… [roll eyes] Talk about trying to weasle your way out of a losing argument.”
Vin responds:
Now isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black!
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Right, Vin, so tell us about how you’re judging “cruelty” there.
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Mel, slavery is basically for one thing and one thing only, whether in Africa or Europe: it’s a way of forceably acquiring another person’s labor. One does this for MATERIAL gain.
Forced labor can be paid labor.
Being a slave is being owned as property, regardless whether one thinks how human his slave is.
The cruelty exist metaphysically, it doesn’t matter the slave was allowed the freedom of movement, never treated badly or beaten once a week on GP.
The survival and response to physical cruelty in bad situations such as a prison camp, concentration camp or victim of atrocities of war are quite different from those who suffered from slavery. People like to point to the Jews as having been slaves and how they had overcome it, but there were several generations after slavery before they lost that slave attitude. That is why Moses had a hard time leading them. There is quite a different attitude after the Holocaust.
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@ Thad
So I agree that the worst forms of chattel slavery did, and still do exist in parts of Africa. However, I also believe that the most benevolent forms of slavery never existed in the United States.
Yes, in some cases, you might have found more fair or more kind-hearted masters, but you would never have found examples of slaves marrying into the family, of taking a fixed share of the family profits. You sometimes found slaves who were emotionally considered almost as family, and you sometimes had masters emancipate slaves as a reward, or in the event of the Master’s death. But of course, these were rare incidents.
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Forced labor can be paid labor.
Being a slave is being owned as property, regardless whether one thinks how human his slave is.
Right, but however one defines slavery, one enslaves people in order to appropriate their work value. That’s the point I was trying to make.
But yeah, one can indeed pay a slave. In fact, many slaves bought their way out of slavery in the americas by doing paid labor whenever they could:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chico_Rei
Chico Rei smuggled gold, but other slaves made money off of selling their labor value on their days off and the like.
The cruelty exist metaphysically…
Well, if it’s just that we’re talking about – the metaphysical pain of being owned – most Europeans had that throughout most of European history: serfs were property.
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@King
However, I also believe that the most benevolent forms of slavery never existed in the United States.
Hard to say. Genovese breaks this issue down pretty well in “Roll, Jordan, Roll”. It has a lot to do with how you a priori define “benevolence” and the like.
Like say you think it’s a more “benevolent” slavery when slaves have access to more material goods. U.S. slavery was pretty good in that respect. But say you think it’s more benevolent when the physical and moral conditions of masters and slaves are not that far apart: Brazil would then win out in a lot of places over the U.S.
Which would you rather? Have a longer, better and more comfortable life but be light-years away from the standards of living enjoyed by your owner? Or be pretty close to your owner in terms of material and moral conditions, but have a life expectancy measured in years instead of decades?
That’s why the qualitative comparisons are ticky and mostly futile.
You sometimes found slaves who were emotionally considered almost as family, and you sometimes had masters emancipate slaves as a reward, or in the event of the Master’s death. But of course, these were rare incidents.
They were common enough that the pre-bellum south had to make laws against them.
Actually, if you think about it, it’s in the master’s interest to free slaves on his death or as a “reward” for years of solid service.
In the first case, his descendants might avoid property taxes and the like, plus he might feel better about rewarding a faithful slave than, say, a son-in-law he hates. But more to the point, as Abagond always brings up, these folks were Christians and Christianity increasingly came to look down on slavery as a sin. So releasing one’s slaves after they could no longer do you any earthly good could be seen as a way to buy some cheap credit with God.
In the second case, after you’d sucked out the best working years of a slave, why not liberate him or her? It means you don’t have to pay to look after them in their old age.
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Thaddeus,
What I said by forced labor did not include slavery. people are now force into paid labor by intimidation and threats. Such as a legal group of immigrants forced to stay on a job that is paying them, by an employer who threatens to fire them if they looked for other work. He belonged to a cartel of local employers who had an agreement to not hire the others employee. This covered a wide radius, which made it very difficult to find work outside. These people were not slaves. There are probably more examples, but I am describing one that personally know about.
I was also not trying clarify anyone else’s definition of pain.
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“Like say you think it’s a more ‘benevolent’ slavery when slaves have access to more material goods. U.S. slavery was pretty good in that respect. But say you think it’s more benevolent when the physical and moral conditions of masters and slaves are not that far apart: Brazil would then win out in a lot of places over the U.S.
Which would you rather? Have a longer, better and more comfortable life but be light-years away from the standards of living enjoyed by your owner? Or be pretty close to your owner in terms of material and moral conditions, but have a life expectancy measured in years instead of decades?
That’s why the qualitative comparisons are ticky and mostly futile”
I’m not sure it’s as simple as quality of life versus quantity. A minimum of either one results in tyranny. The same applies the Master/Slave standard of living gap. For instance, if a slave is living in a beachside condo, and the master is living in a beachside mansion, the gap between them may be quite large, buy both may be relatively comfortable and relatively happy. But if the master is living in a plantation house, and the slave is living in a filthy and drafty shack, then the gap (for the slave) will be quite miserable. This is because, it’s not so much a question of the difference between slave owner and slave, as it is the distance that the slave is kept from the minimal requirements for human well being.
Therefore forms of slavery that makes allowances for the slave to have some control of his own destiny, some forms of privacy, of property, and at least some inalienable rights, and
(of course) a mechanism for redress of grievances, is inherently more benevolent than forms of slavery that do not.
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Well, I think we can take as a given that both systems were based on tyranny. This was just one of the axises explored by Genovese: it’s just the one I remember off the top of my head. He spent the better part of a chapter trying to tackle this “which slavery is better?” question.
This is because, it’s not so much a question of the difference between slave owner and slave, as it is the distance that the slave is kept from the minimal requirements for human well being.
Genovese and a lot of other authors have remarked that North American slavery provided a lot more of those minimal requirements than any other slavery on record. For one thing, it’s the only slavery we know of where the slave population actually went through a natural increase. So that’s something in its “favor”, I guess.
Therefore forms of slavery that makes allowances for the slave to have some control of his own destiny, some forms of privacy, of property, and at least some inalienable rights, and (of course) a mechanism for redress of grievances, is inherently more benevolent than forms of slavery that do not.
However, Brazil was probably better here. Not because slaves had so many “rights” mind you, but because in the completely authoritarian and patriarchical Brazilian system, if a slave owner liked you and was your patron, well, the sky was literally the limit. No one had inalienable rights in colonial Brazil, but it was probably a lot easier to manipulate interpersonal politics in one’s favor than it was in the States, at least in certain places like Salvador or rio de Janeiro.
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Why do black people keep talking about something fourhundrend years ago. There way more to worrie about today the past is the past. The whole world and people in it are slaves to man. I am free from all men. I severe NO MAN and NO ONE. I am just in a world of slavement.
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@ThadY’know Mel, the more I hang out here on Abagond, the more I’m beginning to think that “Eurocentric” is simply a weasel word used by young Americans which means “I do not want to read or think about Africa, I’d rather just fantasize about it”. If you really were concerned about eurocentric views of Africa, you’d be reading all you could in order to effectively critique it. But like most Americans, you seem to think that reading books which don’t agree with you will somehow taint your ideological purity.
You don’t know what my reading list looks like, so speculating is pointless, unless your arrogance has bestowed you with a superhuman ability that allows you to know everything about me.
Second of all, I am not American, so your accusation is futile.
Thirdly, Eurocentrism has an agenda that destroys its credibility. When you spend hundreds of years writing about the ‘dark continent’ and bringing nothing new to the table, you can’t complain that people turn away from your work.
My ideological purity? And, what exactly is that…do tell?
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You don’t know what my reading list looks like, so speculating is pointless, unless your arrogance has bestowed you with a superhuman ability that allows you to know everything about me.
I’ll speculate as I see fit, thanks. When I see Americans (and I’ll toss Canadians and plenty of Brits in here as well) using the word “eurocentric”, 9 out of ten times it means “I haven’t read a single history book about Africa, nor care to.”
Perhaps you are the exception. I highly doubt that. It seems to me, however, that if you are well-read about Africa, you wouldn’t be wasting spit about eurocentrism, you’d use the historical record to mount some sort of defense of your views.
When you spend hundreds of years writing about the ‘dark continent’ and bringing nothing new to the table, you can’t complain that people turn away from your work.
And this is exactly the sort of ignorance I’m on about. Tens of thousands of people have written about Africa. At least a good half of them don’t buy the “Dark Continent” nonsense you’re on about. People like Jean and John Comarof (just to pull an example off the top of my head) are HARDLY eurocentric scholars.
But really engaging with African history means that you’d have to poke about these authors and see who’s saying what and why. That means work. That means going down to a library, maybe taking some classes. It certainly means a lot of reading and thinking.
It’s much, much easier to just declare that everything ever written by anyone who don’t like, black or white, is eurocentric.
Thus, with a sweep of your hand, you’ve automatically authorized yourself to build whatever “history” of Africa suits your fantasies, electing this or that writer as an authority according to your tastes.
Africa, then, has no history to you: it’s a convenient blank screen upon which you can project whatever dream image takes your fancy. Saying things like “The kingdom of Dahomé was the exception rather than the rule when it comes to benefitting from slavery”, conveniently ignoring the fact that pretty much every people on the Western coast of Africa bought into the slave trade at one point or another. Reams and reams of historical documents support this, many of them written by Africans themselves, but ignore all that: that’s “eurocentric”. “Afrocentric” is to believe in an Africa that never existed, where human beings were all noble savages and pristinely moral, only to be sadly corrupted by the fallen humanity living outside the continent’s bounds.
My ideological purity? And, what exactly is that…do tell?
Anyone who dismisses the entirety of written history regarding Africa because it’s “eurocentric” has some clearly ideological concepts of history in their head, friend. And givent hat everyone else in the rest of the world READS what their enemies print in order to dissect it, the only possible reason you wouldn’t want to do that is that you somehow feel that ideas that run contrary to your own will infect you.
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Black Canseco, skippcoon. skippcoon said: A FREAKING MAN http://bit.ly/aKXQdO […]
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Anyone who dismisses the entirety of written history regarding Africa because it’s “eurocentric” has some clearly ideological concepts of history in their head, friend. And givent hat everyone else in the rest of the world READS what their enemies print in order to dissect it, the only possible reason you wouldn’t want to do that is that you somehow feel that ideas that run contrary to your own will infect you.
My god, you’ve got to be one of the most egotistical people I have ever met. What’s worse is that you believe your pseudo-intellectual rants/beliefs have merit away from the pedestal you put them on.
Once again, don’t tell me what I have and haven’t read. You know nothing about my reading list. Don’t tell me what I know and don’t know about Africa.
Furthermore, you are not African, and neither are you the ultimate authority on Africa, its peoples, customs and issues.
What you are is an over-pompous, pseudo-intellectual, condescending over-active message board poster with a bone to pick.
You’re a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with Eurocentrism. You get on this board to tell people what they should know (because in your head, they are a certain way and they know nothing); you spit your knowledge according to the Eurocentric literature you might have read, and claim it to be authentically true because it’s coming from ‘ppl who don’t have a chip on their shoulder.’
I doubt you’ve ever been to Africa and I doubt you know more about Africans and Africa than I do. To tell me that I ‘fantasize’ about Africa and wipe away its reality, would be funny if it wasn’t so disgustingly condescending and presumptuous.
It’s a classic case of the white hero who ‘becomes’ more native than the natives (see Dances w/ Wolf; the Last Samurai); and what makes you worse is that you’ve only read books about the natives.
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My god, you’ve got to be one of the most egostistical people I have ever met.
Why, because I dare to claim that you apparently don’t know what you’re talking about?
Don’t tell me what I know and don’t know about Africa.
If you think 19th century Dahomé was one of the only African nations/peoples to get heavily involved in the slave trade, that’s obviously not much.
Furthermore, you are not African, and neither are you the utlimate authority on Africa, its peoples, customs and issues.
And neither are you. Know what’s the difference between us? I have made an attempt to read people who might plausibly be considered authorities. You don’t seem to have done that.
What you are is an over-pompous, pseudo-intellectual, condescending over-active message board poster with a bone to pick.
I think we can safely say that I’m an intellectual, at least. 😀
because in your head, they are a certain way and they know nothing)
I don’t listen to voices in my head, Mel: I listen to what people say. So far, you haven’t said much which indicates that you know much about African history. I could be wrong, of course. But then, if I am, why are you bothering to spend all this spit on tossing ad hominems my way when you could just use your superior knowledge of Africa to put me in my place?
I mean “Ooooooooh, you…. you… arrogant eurocentrist, you!” is pretty mean potatoes compared to what someone who really knows African history could do to me. I’ll cheerfully admit that I’m just a dabbler in the topic.
So here you are, all hot and bothered because someone dares suggest that you’re wrong, and do you simply and smoothly show why you are right? No, you’re reduced to calling them names. And why is that, Mel?
I’ll lay dollars to donuts it’s because you probably haven’t read more than a hundred pages of straight-up African history in your life. Names are thus the only rocks you have to toss.
And you’re right: I am a white boy who doesn’t know all that much about Africa. That, unfortunately, only makes things that much sadder when it turns out that I know more about it than self-proclaimed afrocentrists such as yourself.
I doubt you’ve ever been to Africa and I doubt you know more about Africans and Africa than I do.
Oh, so let me get this straight: if I go to China on a two week tour, then, I’m allowed to claim that I know all about China, is that it? If I hang out with a bunch of fecklesss Brazilians, somehow an understanding of Brazilian culture and history is just going to ooze its way into my brain, osmosis-like? 😀
Actually, I have been to Africa and know many Africans. But let me give you a clue, Mel, for free: knowing people from a place doesn’t mean you know about that place’s history. Tell me you read its great works and authors, that you speak its language, that you’ve lived there for awhile, that you understand its politics… then I might agree that you know something deep about a place.
Have you done any of that in Africa? If you have, why make assine comments like “African slavery wasn’t as cruel as European slavery”? I mean, I’d expect that statement to come out of the mouth of a Yank who’s only experience with life outside the U.S. has been at the Disney’s “It’s a Small World” ride.
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See…this is the perfect example of topic which doesn’t require a “debate”.
And yet….
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No debate at all is required as long as we toe the line and agree with everything you say, Ank.
Yes, we get it. You wrote an entire article about it. In fact, you have an entire website dedicated to being suprised that anyone could dare disagree with your well-reasoned and polite opinions.
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Thaddeus,
Over forty years ago I took an anthropology seminar in college about cultures of Africa. Most of the required reading was of studies done at least thirty years earlier. In many ways the the information was factual, but since this about culture, the term “female circumcision” was not defined and not defined in a cultural context. I had found a dictionary description, that made it seem no more serious or the intent very little different from male circumcision.
The professor was a white male and so were most of the authors I had to read. Many years latter I find that genital mutilation is more descriptive of female circumcision and that it had extreme cultural implications. It was more than a little skin, the whole clitoris was removed (which is involve in the length of the vulva) then sewn up. This is used to prevent any sexual satisfaction, like a chastity belt. Women’s purpose was for work and procreation only.
As a woman, even though I got the facts from the patriarchy, I didn’t get the cultural significance from them, because they didn’t see it as culturally important.
This is why some Black people may be suspicious of Eurocentric studies of Africa.
Perspective can effect representation of facts.
BTW that professor was a Belgium immigrant and although teaching about Africa, had no understanding of the Civil Right movement of the time.
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Dear Hathor,
While I agree that one’s identity may indeed filter the information which one takes or presents as serious, there simply is no “identity = truth” equation when it comes to science (and history is indeed a science).
I’m sure you’ve noticed that now, 40 years later, white male anthropology professors who specialize in Africa are, indeed, quite informed about female circumcision. Many of them, in fact, fight against it and have done great service in bringing it to the the attention of westerners like you and me.
In fact, I think you’d have a very hard time finding someone today in anthropology who’d come out in favor of female circumcision, though there are all sorts in the profession.
So how can this happen if, as you suggest, the eurocentric patriarchy is so all powerful that it commands all men’s opinions? Shouldn’t all us white male anthropology teachers still be poo-pooing female circumcision if, as you suggest, our identity rules what we consider to be truth?
This is the problem with conspiratorial thinking which believes that “they” (whomever “they” might be) don’t want you to have the facts: it just doesn’t match up with reality on the ground. Anthropologists (of all sorts) have been leading (but certainly not the only) figures in getting information regarding female circumcision out to the world.
And this, of course, is why I’m always chary of people who use the “You are X, so you can’t possibly know” argument to wish away facts they don’t like.
Fact, Hathor: there was no anthropological, patriarchical, Eurocentric conspiracy to hide or belittle female circumcision. In fact, the largest and most vociferous charges of “eurocentrism” on this issue have come from the mouths of Africans – mostly men but also some women – who believe that the west (once again led by those evil anthros, because Lord knows we just have so much power) is projecting its eurocentric cultural and sexual values onto Africa.
Do any websearch you like about “eurocentrism” and “female circumcision”, Hathor, and you’ll see many non-white, non-eurocentrists who are upset with the fact that the West finds this to be such a huge problem.
The largest number of people you are liable to find DEFENDING female genital mutilation today are, in fact, black and African and a significant number of them are even women.
So how does that fit into your view that “identity = truth” on this issue, Hathor?
BTW that professor was a Belgium immigrant and although teaching about Africa, had no understanding of the Civil Right movement of the time.
The Civil Rights movement was going on in the U.S. I bet that prof had a pretty good idea of the anti-colonial struggle going on in the ex-Belgian Congo. Why? because that was probably his area of expertise, not the U.s. south.
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@ Hathor:
part of that reason is that female circumcision is different in different places. In some places it has little actual debilitating effect (more of a token gesture), in others it is extreme and horrific, such as infibulation which you describe.
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I’m wondering if that Anthro you’re remembering wasn’t Johannes Fabian, by the way…
It seems odd to me, though, that you seem to think that a specialist on Africa should know much about U.S. political movements, especially an immigrant.
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Good point, ES. I was going to bring that up, too, but I was afraid I’d then be accused of “belittling the crippling effects of female circumcision”.
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@Thad
ad hominems my way when you could just use your superior knowledge of Africa to put me in my place?
I never claimed I had a superior knowledge of Africa—YOU did. I simply said you DON’T know more about Africa than I do. And, I stand by that.
So here you are, all hot and bothered because someone dares suggest that you’re wrong, and do you simply and smoothly show why you are right? No, you’re reduced to calling them names. And why is that, Mel
Because I am wrong??? Once again, you are NOT the main authority of knowledge on Africa, and you do not get to determine who is and isn’t wrong about Africa. I called you exactly what you are; condescending and arrogant. What you fail to recognize is that your attitude overshadows whatever ‘knowledge’ you claim to have. I don’t think you realize that you’re not changing any minds here or there.
Actually, I have been to Africa and know many Africans. But let me give you a clue, Mel, for free: knowing people from a place doesn’t mean you know about that place’s history. Tell me you read its great works and authors, that you speak its language, that you’ve lived there for awhile, that you understand its politics… then I might agree that you know something deep about a place.
What facts or evidence have you provided to back up your claims about Africa. I hope you realize, though I doubt you can see past your own ego, that you’re just babbler on a message board. I highly doubt you speak any African languages, or practice an African culture, and claiming to ‘know’ Africans. Lol?!
Have you done any of that in Africa? If you have, why make assine comments like “African slavery wasn’t as cruel as European slavery”?
White-European slavery, and the aftermath of it, was far more vicious than African slavery.
You will not change the minds of any black person on this topic. Your ancestors were never slaves but slave masters.
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PS. There’s this idiot on Youtube named Salassin who posts videos about ‘afrocentrics.’ When you challenge him on his claims, among other things, that slavery wasn’t that cruel, not all black people were slaves in the U.S., etc, he often responds by blocking your comment. He’s just as condescending as you. He also claims Latin American heritage. I have to wonder if you’re him.
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I never claimed I had a superior knowledge of Africa—YOU did. I simply said you DON’T know more about Africa than I do. And, I stand by that.
If that’s the case, Mel, how come you don’t realize that Dahomé wasn’t some exception to the rule about African involvment in the slave trade?
Hmmm…? 😀
Once again, you are NOT the main authority of knowledge on Africa…
Never claimed to be, just claimed to apparently know a bit more than you.
What facts or evidence have you provided to back up your claims about Africa.
What claims would you like me to back up in particular, Mel? I’ll be happy to source them for you. Let’s go one at a time.
I highly doubt you speak any African languages…
And you do? 😀
Actually we both do, Mel: English is now an African language. And Portuguese, which I speak, is as well.
…or practice an African culture…
And you do? 😀
…and claiming to ‘know’ Africans. Lol?!
It’s not like Africans are a rare species of practically unknown humanity, Mel. There’s around a billion of them you know. I have a few students from luso-speaking
Africa, in fact, and several friends and colleagues from the continent.
You will not change the minds of any black person on this topic. Your ancestors were never slaves but slave masters.
First of all, I don’t care who’s opinion I change or don’t change. Secondly, I have no ancestors who were slave holders, but I do have several who were slaves. If you knew half as much about European history as you seem to believe you know, Mel, you’d realize that enslaved Europeans outnumbered slav-holding Europeans by a factor of about 1000 to one.
Oh, but that’s right: you don’t DO history, do you? You do heroic fantasy. 😀
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Thaddeus,
You missed my point.
I wasn’t describing today and I was speaking to the issue only how one interest or views can effect the context of facts. It was apparent they didn’t really concern themselves with women in the context of culture only when they discussed kinship, such as matrilineal descent.
The professor wasn’t a recent immigrant.
And you assume I’m too stupid to have read anything else in 40 years. I see misogyny is alive and well and from your statements why would I think a male anthropologist couldn’t be misogynous or racist?
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I got your point, Hathor. Think a bit on mine: if interest and views do indeed effect the context of facts to the point you imply (patriarchy misinforming you about female circumcision), how can it possibly be that these same white, male anthros are among the people ringing the female circumcision bell today?
I mean what, has patriarchy been defeated while I was asleep or something?
It was apparent they didn’t really concern themselves with women in the context of culture only when they discussed kinship, such as matrilineal descent.
This is a valid enough argument, as far as it goes. the anthropology of the pre-1960s didn’t concern itself with much of anything other than kinship and social structure.
However, my question remains: if this is an inevitable side effect of patriachy and racism, how is that we’ve apparently gotten beyond it now?
And you assume I’m too stupid to have read anything else in 40 years.
Wha….? I said “I’m sure you’ve noticed that now, 40 years later…” If I thought you’d not read anything new in 40 years, I’d have hardly said “I’m sure you’ve noticed”, now would I have?
Rest assured, Hathor, if I want you to feel insulted, you’ll know. No need to go making up completely ficticious insults.
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Oh, and btw, Hathor, I’d appreciate it if you could explain one thing to this poor misogynist racist anthropologist:
If indeed it’s eurocentrism that’s enabling female circumcision, why are the main defenders of clit-snipping Africans?
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Eurasian Sensation,
The course cover many cultures in African, there was no elaboration to indicated any difference.
And for me even the minimal invasive procedure is two much. The most I’ve heard of the side effects of male circumcision has been some loss of sensation. Women can easily have urinary track infections from being exposed to bacteria on a wash cloth and have to be extremely cautious after an Episiotomy. So, as you say, one which only has little debilitating effect, can result in infections.
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Thaddeus,
If indeed it’s eurocentrism that’s enabling female circumcision, why are the main defenders of clit-snipping Africans?
There is nothing I said that implied what you are responding too.
You must be a hero in your mind.
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Hathor, let’s break it down…
You claim – and I quote – “one’s interest or views can effect the context of facts” and you link that “interest or views” to the fact that my presumptive eurocentrism and maleness means that understand that female circumcision is serious business.
So how does that view square with the fact that a significant number of female circumcision’s defenders are African and female?
My point is that obviously, one’s identity labels are not enough to give one a certain view about a topic.
The course cover many cultures in African, there was no elaboration to indicated any difference.
None at all, huh? Well, gee, Hathor, that’s really strange, because when I look at classic works of anthropology from the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s (such as “The Nuer” or “Kalela Dance” or what have you), I see anthros who are positively frothing as they explain how radically diverse African cultures are. I mean, classic author after classic author does this. So this seems to me to indicate one of two things: either that prof was a very poor prof and thus not a good example of anthropological views on Africa or 40 years have taken some of the sharp edges off your memory.
It’s gotta be one or the other, Hathor, because anthropology in 1970 certainly didn’t see Africa as a homogenous “Dark Continent”.
And for me even the minimal invasive procedure is two much. The most I’ve heard of the side effects of male circumcision has been some loss of sensation.
Never heard of a botched male circumcision? Then you haven’t really looked into it.
You must be a hero in your mind.
You mean I’m not supposed to be? Oh, gosh, I’m now staring into an existential abyss because some anonymous poster on the internet doubted my relevance…. Guess I’ll just go slit my wrists in the bath, now.
Sniff.
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Thad,
Yes I’ve heard of botched male circumcision.
But a botched procedure is just that, it is not a side effect.
I did say my references were much older and the class was in 68. I have no way of judging his credentials, only he was a full professor and had a PhD at a state university.
I was only referring to females in reference to the diversity.
The problem with academics they over analyze, when arguing and go off on tangents and see implications that are not actually there. Your premises are wrong so the conclusion you get are wrong, even though the logic is sound.
As IT people say,” garbage in, garbage out.”
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Hathor, while I agree that messing around with the female genitals probably causes more side effects, male circumcision is being increasingly criticized for its side effects, such as decreased sensitivity, infections and etc. It’s kind of a toss up in my mind, however, if male circumcision is actually so harmless or if it is just believed to be so because so many cultures naturalize violence towards men as “necessary” or “character building”.
But fine. Circumcision bad. I get it and generally agree.
I did say my references were much older and the class was in 68. I have no way of judging his credentials, only he was a full professor and had a PhD at a state university.
Yeah, well for reference, “The Nuer” is from the 1930s and “Kalela Dance” from the ’50s, IIRC. By the 1920s, at least, anthropology had “discovered” African diversity. So if 50 years later, an Africanist anthropologist was giving you the impression that Africa was one big homogenous mass, he either wasn’t very good or you are misremembering things.
The problem with academics they over analyze, when arguing and go off on tangents and see implications that are not actually there.
The problem with non-academics is that they think a bit they learned in a freshman class decades ago or something they barely remember from the telly yesterday qualifies as “an informed opinion” and they see implications in their often-conspiratorial understandings of the world.
So now we know that you despise people for spouting off when they have an informed opinion and I despise people for spouting off when they don’t.
That was fun.
Your premises are wrong so the conclusion you get are wrong, even though the logic is sound.
So let me see… Your knowledge of how anthropology treats Africa comes from an undergrad class more than 40 years ago. Mine comes from a PhD I got 4 years ago after more than a decade of study. But my premises on how anthropology treats Africa are unsound because… Because of what, exactly, Hathor?
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Thad said:
“I don’t listen to voices in my head, Mel: I listen to what people say.”
I wish you did. It would make talking to you so much easier. Instead commenter after commenter keeps saying “that’s not what I meant!” in one form or other. You PRESUME what people are thinking instead of reading just what they wrote and that gets you into disagreements.
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Thad:
The point of this post was not to prove that Western slavery was worse than African slavery – that was like an aside in the post and would need a post of its own. It was to point out how white Americans make an issue of African slavery to draw attention away from their own practice of slavery and how bad it was.
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Thad,
Then you should stay in academic circles and not deem us mere mortals as your adversary.
FYI it wasn’t a freshman course.
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Thad,
Maybe you would find good company here
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@ Victoria:
Thank you for your excellent comment.
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Abagond, everyone here presumes to one degree or another. Take a look at the current hissy fight going on between some of these same complaintants over on the Bethany Storro thread. It’s hard to take their complaints seriously when they do the same stuff themselves and do it constantly.
But let’s talk about a huge and often unchallenged presumption that often raises its head here: the presumption that someone can’t possibly know jack about topic X because they’re not a member of identity category Y.
That’s a HUGE motherf***ing presumption, but because it fits the overriding dogma of the Anglo myth of identity, few people challenge it here but yours truly.
And this is PRECISELY what pisses many folks here off, not my presumptions.
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The point of this post was not to prove that Western slavery was worse than African slavery – that was like an aside in the post and would need a post of its own.
No doubt, but that wasn’t my argument, was it? That’s the argument of Victoria, Mel and Vindicator, so maybe you should be talking to them about that.
My original argument was that the attempts to portray african slavery as “not really that bad”, engaged in by many people (and you can see examples of it above), are the same sort of phenomenon as the one you describe.
Victoria’s comments, which you find to be excellent, are exactly such an example of this. She seems to think that rape is basically “more human”, as long as it’s covered by the term “marriage” into a polygamous family where the married woman is considered her hsuband’s property.
I mean that is really the long and the short of it, Abagond, and it’s precisely the sort of crappy falsely moral argument which your original post decries.
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@Hathor
Then you should stay in academic circles and not deem us mere mortals as your adversary.
That’s right, Hathor: I’m not telling you to go anywhere, nor am I slagging you for your education or lack thereof. I’m the arrogant one simply because I’m an academic.
Do you know what a load of absolute crapola that is?
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Thad:
Some points:
1. I took it for granted that everyone reading this would assume that slavery is evil and cruel no matter who practised it. I said:
“So slavery in places like Haiti, Barbados and America was much more cruel.”
Meaning that the Roman and African slavery I was comparing it to was cruel too, just not as much. So, no, I do not think African slavery was “somehow a nice walk in the park”. And seeking to excuse slavery is the very last thing I would do. That whites even attempt to do it just blows my mind.
2. The beliefs of the Catholic Church is not a good guide to what the man in the street or the rich in a largely Catholic society believe. Catholics are not ideological robots who have rented their brain to the pope.
3. You said:
“Slavery was VERY common throughout sub-saharan Africa, as it was in every single human civilization before the industrial revolution. “
That is just not true. For Africa I will get you the source and quote. China and Christian Europe through most of their history did not practise slavery on a large scale. If you want to count serfs and peasants as slaves, then where do you stop? Were black sharecroppers slaves too? What about the millions of debt slaves in America? If you do not draw the line the word becomes weak and useless.
4. I agree that racism is the effect not the cause of slavery, but it got going soon enough – you see it in Shakespeare by 1603 and in the laws of Virginia by the 1660s. You do not have to be a Social Darwinist or agree with the people at Stormfront to be a racist.
5. The material lives of slaves in America was better than in the West Indies, Brazil or Africa, but what makes being a slave so terrible is not being poor – it is having no rights, no freedom. And on that score America was way worse than the others. And racism most certainly is the cause of that.
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Distilling the current bafafá:
Abagond: White people often point to African slavery in order to derail discussions about how bad the Atlantic slave trade was.
Thad: Yeah, but many people also try and act as if African slavery was no big deal a’tall, as if the Atlantic slave trade just erased it from history.
Victoria, Vindicator and Mel: African slavery was family based and thus more human and less cruel than European slavery.
Thad: The hell it wasn’t! You can’t meaningfully qualitatively compare mass human suffering and, besides, your notions of the African family as some sort of rebdout of human liberty and justice are seriously ethnocentric and ignorant. Go read some books about what happened back then: slavery was very, very bad, in both cases.
V,V,M: Evil white man, you are misogynist and sexist and, above all, elitist for telling us to read history in order to understand it.
Thad: Yeah, well if you don’t read about another people’s history, you can’t hope to understand it and that’s why you’re making these weird presumptions about African history: you’re fundamentally ignorant about it.
V,V,M: Don’t presume that we’re ignorant simply because we have nothing of any substance to say about a topic.
Hathor: Yeah, you presumptive, arrogant scumbag. who are you to say one person’s ignorance isn’t better than another’s informed opinion?
Thad: It ain’t. Ignorance is just that: ignorance. If you’ve got an informed opinion, I’m all ears: bring it on.
ALL: You evil, presumptive, misogynist sexist, elitist arrogant jerk!
Abagond: Thaddeus, quit presuming things. It’s not nice.
😀
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@Abagond:
1) First of all, you know that race was only invented late on in the Atlantic trade. Secondly, you know that other qualifiers of human essence – such as religion or nation or identity – can easily reduce people to degraded Others as quickly as race can. Thus the idea that race necessarily made the Atlantic trade worse simply doesn’t hold water. We’re supposed to believe that it was “better”, for example, during the period stretching from 1400 to at least 1700 when the race concept simply didn’t exist as such?
2) Regarding Catholicism, your point is…?
3) That is just not true. For Africa I will get you the source and quote.
Please do. I would very much like to see it.
China and Christian Europe through most of their history did not practise slavery on a large scale. If you want to count serfs and peasants as slaves, then where do you stop?
Abagond, it’s the same damn root word in Latin. “Slave” ultimately meant “serf brought in from a foreign nation” and serf meant “domestically raised slave”. Sure, these terms shifted over the centuries, no doubt, but the stone cold hard fact of the matter is this: serfs were property, they weren’t free and they had little to nothing in the way of rights.
Period.
4) Regarding racism, “othering” behavior and the treatment of despised others as s*** is a human constant. I have no doubt that the English thought the Africans were scum in Shakespeare’s time, just like they thought the Irish and the Spanish were scum. They also used the word “race” to describe those two peoples. The idea that race in 1603 was somehow excluesively applied to black Africans and other people of color is simply false.
5) The material lives of slaves in America was better than in the West Indies, Brazil or Africa, but what makes being a slave so terrible is not being poor – it is having no rights, no freedom.
No doubt. And yet European serfs also had no freedom, correct? So if it’s lack of freedom that makes a life terrible, why are you insisting that there was this huge abyss between, say, the life of a French peasant in 1600 and the life of an African slave? I think we can agree that the lack of freedom isn’t what makes the slave different than the serf.
Lack of freedom isn’t the problem: it’s the presumed lack of social reciprocity in early slavery, which is later codified into a caste system based on race in later slavery.
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I think the best counter to the African slavery thing is that we aren’t in flipping Africa (usually) so who cares? And yes, it’s also not 1864 but we have plenty of sh#t here and now to deal with because of American slavery. The point is recognizing how slavery made us who we are now and how it’s still relevent.
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Thad said:
“Victoria, Vindicator and Mel: African slavery was family based and thus more human and less cruel than European slavery.”
Vin responds:
Does your intellectual dishonesty know no ends! I never said that statement or even implied that statement.
And you wonder why people think you are ignorant and arrogant!
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\Thaddeus said:
First of all, that’s not necessarily true. Just like the Africans had no notion of chattel slavery, they had no notion of “indentured servitude”. Slavery was formally for life, but like in chattel slavery, there were ways of getting manumitted.
I say:
Here I need to state that I’m not American so I’m woefully ignorant about how a slave could get manumitted in the US of A. Could you throw some light on it?
Thaddeus said: Secondly, that “marriage” was FORCED. When that sort of thing happened in the context of European slave-owning, it was called RAPE. Let’s not gussy up sexual subordination, OK? I mean, I’m the guy here who normally says it’s hard to call 17th century mating customs “rape” by our current standards because women were not understood to own their sexuality.[/i]
I say: I believe slaves included males too, right? So when a male slave was married into the family it was for a woman to rape him? Hahahihihehe. That’s absurd.
Here’s what wiki says about African slavery:
Slavery in African cultures was generally more like indentured servitude: “slaves” were not made to be chattel of other men, nor enslaved for life. African “slaves” were paid wages and were able to accumulate property. They often bought their own freedom and could then achieve social promotion -just as freedman in ancient Rome- some even rose to the status of kings (e.g. Jaja of Opobo and Sunni Ali Ber).
I say: Seems pretty different to me than the form of slavery that existed in the USA, Haiti etc.
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@ Thad
this is how you post…
Random poster: I like wafflez.
Thad: so what your REALLY saying is that you can’t stand pancakes! Admit it, the thought of pancakes makes you want to vomit, they disgust you! Why would you say that you hate pancakes When they are clearly delicious? Here’s 15 examples of why you are wrong to hate pancakes as you have so clearly stated.
Random poster: actually I never said that, I like pancakes too.
Thad: ha! So you admit it.
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jasOnburns
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!
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WTF happened with this thread while I was away? How many derailments do we really need here?
Honestly, the point of this thread was achieved in the 4th line: “Africa was not a country. Africans were not selling “their own”.
I must admit I know next to nothing about slavery in Africa, so I don’t have anything smart to add here.
On the other hand, I do agree with Thad about racism- racism was hardly what made this type of slavery the worst. They could have used another criteria: religion or ethnicity (other common reasons) and it would be the same. Hey, they could have used anything (eye colour, height, language) it it would be the same.
PS-Discussing slavery as a phenomena would be interesting, no doubt. But this is not an appropriate thread, I think (and I hate derailments). We can also discuss other issues raised here (mostly by Thad): “you don’t understand X if you’re not X yourself”, or caring about your people (whatever you define them), their destiny and suffering more about the others, but I don’t think this is the appropriate place.
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I think the best counter to the African slavery thing is that we aren’t in flipping Africa (usually) so who cares?
“We aren’t in flipping Europe, so who cares? Mass chattel slavery doesn’t exist any more, so who cares?”
If you’re going to go that route, Jason, you’ll find it to be quite slippery. And you’ll also quickly find yourself preaching to the choir.
It’s hard enough to get people to think about history and what it means today without waving one’s hand and trying to get them to think about history while simultaneously ignoring all the little nasty bits that don’t fit into your ideology.
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Thad said:
“Victoria, Vindicator and Mel: African slavery was family based and thus more human and less cruel than European slavery.”
Vin responds:
Does your intellectual dishonesty know no ends! I never said that statement or even implied that statement.
And you wonder why people think you are ignorant and arrogant!
@Vindicator
I stand corrected, Vindy. You of course are correct.
Vicky claimed that African slavery was less cruel and gave a reason to support her belief (she thinks that the family had an ameliorating effect on slave/master relations).
You, of course, just claimed that African slavery was less cruel than European slavery without giving any reason whatsoever for your opinion.
Please forgive my presumption that you were attempting to argue rationally, as Vicky and Mel were. 😀
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I thoughed that this subject was about how some whites use these other slavesystems as an explanation to make american slavery seem not so bad.
But I guess this is about Thad and his excellence or lack of it. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong 😀
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Random poster: I like wafflez.
Thad: so what your REALLY saying is that you can’t stand pancakes! Admit it, the thought of pancakes makes you want to vomit, they disgust you! Why would you say that you hate pancakes When they are clearly delicious? Here’s 15 examples of why you are wrong to hate pancakes as you have so clearly stated.
Random poster: actually I never said that, I like pancakes too.
Thad: ha! So you admit it.
So you think I’m made a HUGE presumption when I tossed Vindy’s blanket and unattributed statement (“European slavery was crueler than African slavery”) into the same bucket wiuth Vicky’s claim that African slavery was less cruel because the slaves were part of the family?
Pick many nits, do you Jason? 😀
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Thad, I have never suggested that blacks were believed by most whites to be not human. Neither did I claim that race ideology cast races as subhuman. Neither have I implied that you need to dehumanize people to torture them.
You are putting words into my mouth, and deliberately being patronising by rattling off simple truths and acting like you’re so clever for knowing something we don’t. You latched onto a single word I use and interpret it in the worst possible way, so you can show off your “intellectual” prowess. Chillax, dude.
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“I thought that this subject was about how some whites use these other slavesystems as an explanation to make american slavery seem not so bad.
But I guess this is about Thad and his excellence.”
LOL!
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sam,
But I guess this is about Thad and his excellence or lack of it. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.
Same here. *confused*
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““We aren’t in flipping Europe, so who cares? Mass chattel slavery doesn’t exist any more, so who cares?”
well broadly speaking one can care about whatever one chooses to. However, discussing the comparative evils of African slavery is not as relevent to the issue of modern day racism as American chattel slavery I don’t think. I didn’t mean nobody should care about it literally.
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@D
Here I need to state that I’m not American so I’m woefully ignorant about how a slave could get manumitted in the US of A. Could you throw some light on it?
For most of the history of the colonies that now make up the U.S., a slave could be manumitted at his or her master’s will. Towards the mid 19th century, as the African slave trade shut down and abolitionism ramped up, many southern states passed laws prohibitting manumission.
Manumission generally tended to happen for three reasons: the slave in question had some intimate personal connection to the master (i.e. was their lover or child); the master suddenly got a conscience regarding slavery (usually on their death bed); the master wished to avoid supporting a slave that was too old to generate much useful work.
In Brazil, slaves could also buy themselves out of slavery, but that’s not manumission. I’m pretty sure they could do so in Louisiana under the French, too, and perhaps in Florida under the Spanish. IIRC, the “buy yourself out” deal was a bit of Catholicism at work, but I’d have to go and look that up to be sure.
I believe slaves included males too, right?
Sure, but two things there:
1) In African slavery, females were much preferred for the reasons I gave above. this is why women were tha majority of the slaves in early Africa.
2) Male slaves, AFAIK, typically weren’t “married into the family”, as Vicky claims. If someone has information to the contrary, I’d like to see it.
There were many types of slavery in Africa, by the way, and family-based slavery was only one of these types. Chattel slavery also existed and was fairly widespread, even before the Europeans showed up (especially in Islamic Africa).
So what Vicky is doing is taking one type of African slavery and making it stand in for thw whole. She then, erroneously, claims that this slavery was based on marriage and thus somehow “better”. The type of slavery she’s talking about, however, usually involved women and children, not grown men.
Regarding your wiki comment, that’s odd, because when I look up “slavery in Africa” on the wiki, it quite clearly states that there were different types of slavery on the continent, including chattel slavery. And that quote from the “African slave trade” íece on the Wiki that you give us is followed by a DIRECT quote from an African scholar, Dr. Akurang-Parry, which quite clearly states that Africans sold Africans in the same way that Europeans sold Europeans: i.e. as members of other peoples/nations.
Furthermore, whether or not early Africa had a notion of chattel slavery (and, like Europe – as your wiki points out – it probably didn’t), it quickly developed one through intensified contact with the outside world. If you’d like to argue that Europeans brought intensified chattel slavery to Africa, go right ahead: I’ve argued that above. But for 400 some years, it was very definitely practiced on Africans by Africans as well. Why? Not because Africans were innocent little creatures contaminated by evil europeans. African leaders took to chattel slavery in the same way that they took to gunpowder weapons: it allowed them to accrue more power to themselves.
So yeah, both slavery in EUROPE AND AFRICA was non-chattel before capitalism came around. As in Africa, slaves in Europe could buy their way out and often rise to the top of society. IIRC, there was even a Roman emporer who was once and ex-slave. What changes the game is CAPITALISM, not Europeanism or Africanism. And capitalism, while it may have reared its ugly head in Europe first, is a trans-human development: wherever it goes, people take it up, just like they take up firearms and leave off bows and arrows or take up automobiles and leave of ox-wagons. They do it because it’s a POWERFUL TOOL. And when capitalism hits slavery, you get CHATTEL SLAVERY.
This was the case in Africa and all across Asia, just as it was in Europe. I have a friend who did basic researchn on this, btw, checking out how many native terms for forced servitude, across the 16th century Portuguese diaspora, became simply transformed into “slave” as time wore on.
So it’s a bit of a red herring when you compare, say, 14th century Songhai to 19th century Haiti. You’re comparing a non-capitalist system to a capitalist system. A better comparison would be 14th century Songhai to, say, 6th century Rome, or 19th century Haiti to 19th century Dahomé.
It seems to me, D, that your evidencing a rather subtle form of the “Africa is a country” myth, whereby one sort of slavery among one people during a specific time period becomes ALL of Africa, always. And you’re also evidencing the “Africa is timeless” myth, whereby Africa and African cultures stand apart from the general flow of human history, as if they continet wasn’t a crucial component of the construction of capitalism.
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Here’s a decent reading list on slavery in Africa for people who aren’t book-shy:
The Slave Trade – Thomas
Transformations in Slavery – Lovejoy
Slavery in Africa – Koytoff and Miers
Slavery and African Life – Manning
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@Mira
WTF happened with this thread while I was away? How many derailments do we really need here?
I’ll bring it back to my main point, then:
While whites do indeed derail discussions about slavery by saying “Hey, Africans sold their own”, as we’ve seen above, many other people also derail discussions of slavery by claiming that slavery in Africa “really wasn’t that bad”.
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Snaily
Thad, I have never suggested that blacks were believed by most whites to be not human. Neither did I claim that race ideology cast races as subhuman. Neither have I implied that you need to dehumanize people to torture them.
OK. Here’s what you claimed:
I’m with Abagond on this one. Racism added an extra dimension to US/European slavery and set it apart from African slavery; the construction of race led to black people being dehumanized.
Forgive me for mys presumptions here, Snailly, but when you say “the construction of race led to black people being dehumanized”, how is that substantially different from saying an ideology was constructed that casts the black race as subhuman?
Race is an ideological construct, correct? And when you dehumanize someone, you claim they are less than human, correct? So when race leads to people being dehumanized, it’s an ideology which casts people as subhuman, correct?
So how is what I said substantially different from what you said?
My point is that one doesn’t need race to create that “extra dimension” to European slavery. In fact, European slavery got along just fine for centuries without a cohesive notion of race. Capitalism is what creates chattel slavery and it’s european slavery’s chattel nature that sets it appart from most early African forms, not its racism or its necessary cruelty.
The dehumanization doesn’t come in with race, Snailly: it comes in with treating humans as expendable cogs in a profit-making machine. Race comes along centuries later to justify the caste distinctions built by chattel slavery. And race REALLY doesn’t hit its stride as a popular and determinitive ideology until AFTER abolition.
So to claim that it’s race which sets European slavery apart is, to me, simply ahistorical.
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well broadly speaking one can care about whatever one chooses to. However, discussing the comparative evils of African slavery is not as relevent to the issue of modern day racism as American chattel slavery I don’t think. I didn’t mean nobody should care about it literally.
Yeah, well, I didn’t bring up the comparative evils bit in the first place, did I, Jase? You can thank Vicky, Mel and vindy for that.
My oeiginal point, once again, is that while it’s true that “Africans sold their own” is a dogma that’s used to avoid looking at what slavery really was, the “African slavery wasn’t as bad as other types of slavery” is another sort of dogma which serves a similar purpose.
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@Jen
But I guess this is about Thad and his excellence.
Why, thank you Jen. 😛
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I JUST WANT TO SAY 1 THING TO THAD THADEAU….I AM COMPLETELY WITH YOU AND YOU ARE CLEARLEY VERY INTELIGENT ON THIS MATTER IN PARTICULAR THIS IS A CASE OF A LOT OF PEOPLE GESSING WHAT THEY FINK ARE PROBABLY FACTS AGAINST ONE PERSON WHO ACTUALY KNOWS WELL DONE MATE ITS FAIR TO SAY YOU DOMINATED THIS ARGUMENT
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great post there were oraganized armies in central africa against the slave trade…they gave them a great butt kicking to say the least.
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i missed the entire point of Thaddeus’s first post to be honest…
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Hi, for what it’s worth I have spent some time in W. Africa and as far as de-humanisation of slaves goes try googling human sacrifice .A Ghanian friend of mine told me it was traditional to ‘send ‘ a few Hausas along for company when an Ashanti royal was buried.
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*shrug* My uncle once told me our ancestors “sent” the mukala into the volcano of Mt. Cameroon.
FYI, the mukala are white-skinned people born to black hair. They often have reddish-blond hair and blue or grayish blue eyes.
Modern rites – supposedly – involve simply shaving the head of a mukala and tossing their hair into the volcano.
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@Peanut
great post there were oraganized armies in central africa against the slave trade…they gave them a great butt kicking to say the least.
This was the Kingdom of the Congo which you’re referring to…?
i missed the entire point of Thaddeus’s first post to be honest…
It’s quite simple, Peanut. It’s that there are many political uses of African slavery other than the one pointed to by Abagond, above. While certain people will bring it up in order to avoid thinking about how bad the Transatlantic slave trade was, others will bring it up as a supposedly superior, “kinder”, or “less cruel” form of slavery precisely in order to dismiss it as not really slavery at all.
The fact of the matter is, neither of these groups is really interested in what slavery actually was: they are more interested in using a few decontextualized facts about it in order to support their current political and ideological arguments.
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My uncle once told me “sent” the mukala into the volcano of Mt. Cameroon.
Those Phoenicians did get around.
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So let’s say for arguments sake that slavery is slavery. Does anyone have any other suggestions on how to center the discussion around American slavery and it’s relevence when someone brings up the African slavery thing? Since clearly just arguing that it was “worse” isn’t going to stop a determined derailer.
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Why would you want to “center” it anywhere, Jason, given that as a historical phenomenon it wasn’t “centered”? You’re looking for men in black hats in a sea of men in black hats.
I think you need to draw back and ask “What do I want this guy to do? Do I want him believing in my political dogmas at a snap of my fingers? Or do I want to get him to THINK about what slavery really was in the hopes that this will lead him to further revelations on his own?”
I think the second strategy gets you more.
So when I get a student who says something like “But the Africans sold their own”, I’ll respond with something like, “OH, yes, very true. Just like the Europeans sold their own. Anyone was grist for the mill for slavery. Of course, they didn’t see it as ‘selling their own’: they saw it as selling criminals and prisoners of war, much like the Romans used to do. Africans became the preferred victims for transatlantic slavery not because they were better at selling their own than the Europeans were, but for a series of reasons…”
At that point, you can build into a history of transatlantic slavery which shows who was mainly benefitting from it: a small class of wealthy Europeans and a much, much smaller handful of African nobles. And you can show where the capital accrued and how it was used and what this means in terms of Africa’s economic development relative to Europe’s today.
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But that kind of a strategy doesn’t allow you to paint an entire grouping of people as “baaaaaaaaaaaaaad”, which is what both the “damned Africans” and “damned Europeans” factions of this debate want – including yourself, apparently, Jason.
You want history to resolve itself into a nice, simple, easily understood morality play so that you can choose the right side and claim that you’re a saint.
I always wonder what most of the people posting here would think about slavery back in, say 1750. Frankly, I think most commentators would be spouting the popular dogmas of THAT period just like the spout the popular dogmas of today. Some few would be abolitionists for religious reasons, not because they believed in anything like human rights. Many more would probably just shrug slavery off as a necessary evil or the way of the world, as they currently do, say, the U.S. empire’s illegal wars in Iraq and Afganistan.
People who look to dogma to give them their moral compass don’t tend to be the folks who change history.
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@ Thad
According to the Amazon review, Slavery in Africa – Koytoff and Miers the reviewer seems to be supporting the “Kinder, gentler” idea of African Slavery, at least in the first part of the book.
“The first part of the book deals with how African slavery is different than “Western” slavery. Westerners have this image of a slave who is unhappy and seeking freedom but Miers and Kopytoff are quick to point out that in most African societies it was common to find a “slave” working alongside his “master” and earning the same living.”
It also seems that there were many more varied forms of slavery in Africa, owing to the diversity of custom there.
“Overall, the reader can be awestruck by the amount of information that can be obtained from this book. Learning about the diverse societies that spread all over Africa, one can take the assumption that African slavery is indeed different from society to society. Finally, a clear analysis from this book is that Western slavery is nowhere near as complex as African slavery.
Interesting, I think I’ll pick up a copy.
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Hmmm… the Comaroffs, Miers and Kopytoff. This is like being in African Studies again.
Re: Miers and Kopytoff — they reject the idea of slavery in Africa in general; you’ll notice they put the word slavery in quotation marks to stress that it shouldn’t be pre-defined or compared in modern terms. They call “slavery” just one of many dependent relationships that existed in Africa.
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Yes, that’s true. However, for our purposes here (which seem to be more political/moral rather than anthropological), that’s pretty much a semantic argument. Miers and Kopytoff aren’t making any sort of argument, at all, as to which sort of “dependent relationships” are better or worse, crueler or nicer. They just have a very precise definition of “slavery” because they are interested in charting out what other sorts of forced and power relationships exist in the world.
(By the way, note that when I make these sort of preicse anthropological arguments, they’re roundly criticized as “semantical BS”. Mostly, commentors here are the “toss all the cats in one bag” kind of people.)
Furthermore, Meirs and Kopytoff don’t “reject the idea of slavery in Africa in general”: they reject the idea that it existed before the Arabs and Europeans started showing up. After there was contact with these proto-capitalist economies, slavery – like the use of steel swords and firearms – spread across Africa because it was a very useful social technology to the people whu ruled the African proto-states. Meirs and Kopytoff are very aware of this.
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By the way, there were several places in the Western hemisphere where “it was common to find a “slave” working alongside his “master” and earning the same living,” the northern tier of the southern U.S. states being one of them.
This is the point Genovese brings up when he asks how are we to define whether or not slavery was better or worse in one area?
One of the axises which he stipulates is the socio-economic difference between masters and slaves. If they are basically eating the same food and doing the same jobs and living the same sort of material existence, Genovese (and Meirs and Kopytoof, apparently) see this as “better”.
However, a couple of commentators above claim that this is no issue at all: the real issue is whether or not a person is FREE. If that’s our only axis of describing slavery, then Meirs and Kopytoff are incorrect and any sort of dependent, forced relationship is slavery.
That’s why one can’t be an absolutist on this issue. There’s a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration. Freedom, for example, is a wonderful thing UNLESS it means freedom to slowly starve to death, which may indeed have been the fate of slaves who were manumitted in their ’70s and ’80s…
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They don’t believe “slavery”, as it is currently defined, can be applied in any meaningful way to the systems that existed in Africa, in other words they reject the idea of “slavery” in Africa.
But Miers and Kopytoff contradict themselves, and others contradict them. I don’t think there is any way someone can say “this is what slavery in Africa was like” because first they would have to define it, which is hard enough, then they would have to find elements that were common in all parts of Africa which is even more difficult.
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“However, a couple of commentators above claim that this is no issue at all: the real issue is whether or not a person is FREE. If that’s our only axis of describing slavery, then Meirs and Kopytoff are incorrect and any sort of dependent, forced relationship is slavery.”
But according to them “slavery” and freedom were not dichotomous; there were several instances where a “slave” had certain rights we attribute to freedom.
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Putting my Cameroon cap on, here’s my declaration, not least as a reply to the infamous “my family never owned slaves”.
Well… my family never sold slaves. And they never purchased any either.
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Why am I not surprised that Thaddeus is promoting Eurocentric books that he has read on Africa to help push his point?
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@Natasha
They don’t believe “slavery”, as it is currently defined, can be applied in any meaningful way to the systems that existed in Africa, in other words they reject the idea of “slavery” in Africa.
Natasha, first of all, you’re missing a key point of this book: it was not written by Meirs and Kopytoff, but ORGANIZED by them. There’re 20 odd authors in the book and a wide diversity of opinions of African slavery.
I happen to have read the book and I can tell you, sincerely and seriously, that Meirs and Koptytoff’s pieces make an ANTHROPOLOGICAL and not moral/political argument about slavery. One which I happen to agree with, by the way. I think that there are many forms of forced labor and service which are not “slavery” in the chattel slavery sense of the term. That said, if one were to apply the absolutist definition of slavery that Meirs and Kopytoff use, one would be forced to conclude that slavery during pre-modern times in Europe “wasn’t really” slavery either.
M&K are part of a particularist minority when it comes to discussing slavery. They basically take the position that the only “real” slavery in the world was thransatlantic chattel slavery. In this, they are somewhat the equivalent of certain Jewish scholars who claim that the only “real” genocide was the holocaust. Both positions are well-argued but are far from consensual. And P&K’sposition claims – as the posters above here are claiming – that forced forms of dependence in Africa were “less cruel” or “nicer” or what have you.
So if you want to take the P&K position, that’s fine. What you’re saying then is that slavery doesn’t really exist without capitalism and that other forms of forced labor haver their particularities which need to be understood and respected. What you’re NOT saying, at leasy if you hew to their argument, is that these forced forms of labor were “less cruel”.
I don’t think there is any way someone can say “this is what slavery in Africa was like” because first they would have to define it, which is hard enough, then they would have to find elements that were common in all parts of Africa which is even more difficult.
Oh, I dunno. Their book gives one a pretty good basis for proceeding with a classification of slavery/forced labor and captivity in Africa. You’re right that there’s no “one” African slavery form but many and that these develop over time.
Read the book and think about what it says. It’s even available on Kindle! 😀
But according to them “slavery” and freedom were not dichotomous; there were several instances where a “slave” had certain rights we attribute to freedom.
Natasha, you’re making a classic mistake: you’re trying to understand an author’s position based on reading a paragraph or two out of context. READ their articles. It’s been some time since I read M&K, but IIRC, they make no attribution regarding “freedom” in the systems they describe. One was DEFINITELY not free. Also, I would point out that slavery and rights are not contradictory. In the Catholic diaspora, slaves also had some rights which we attribute to freedom. That didn’t make them any less slaves, even in M&K’s view of things.
Also, I’m interested in where you’re picking “rights” up in their article. what they’re saying is that the economic conditions of slaves weren’t that different from their master’s, being that they did the same work: that has nothing at all to do with rights.
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@Mel
Why am I not surprised that Thaddeus is promoting Eurocentric books that he has read on Africa to help push his point?
Mel, Mier and Kopytoff’s book is as Africa-centered as anyone could care to wish and many of the authors in it are very concerned with looking at what happened from an African perspective. As Natasha points out, the organizer’s articles themselves – if taken at face value as you are wont to take things – can be understood as perceiving a solid difference between African and European forms of slavery. If even a shallow thinker were to read this book, they’d find at least SOME proof for the claims that you are trying to make.
But the fact of the matter is, Mel, that even when I point you to a book that could be used to support your position and shove it right under your nose and say “Here, look at this. This is where you can find some stuff to back up your views that European and African slavery were qualitiatively different”… Even when I do THAT, you’re such a broken record and so allergic to actually READING WORDS ON A PRINTED PAGE that you disparage your intellectual allies as “Eurocentric”.
You’re playing the fool, Mel. And a very ignorant fool at that. It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that you just can’t be bothered to read any history of Africa at all, even when it supports your views. 😛
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@Femi
Well… my family never sold slaves. And they never purchased any either.
Great! But my question to you, then, would be why you think it makes a difference to history what your family did or did not do? After all, no one here is claiming that all Africans, today, are somehow morally responsible for slavery 500 years ago.
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Thad,
“Natasha, first of all, you’re missing a key point of this book: it was not written by Meirs and Kopytoff, but ORGANIZED by them. There’re 20 odd authors in the book and a wide diversity of opinions of African slavery.”
They used references to form their own argument, yes… this is widely done. This doesn’t make it not their book. They presented plenty of their own arguments in the book. But we’ll agree to disagree on that one since it’s not extremely relevant.
“Read the book and think about what it says. It’s even available on Kindle!”
Are you implying that I didn’t read the book?
That’s very presumptuous of you, but not really surprising since you are presumptuous as a rule. I wouldn’t have entered this discussion if their names (and the Comaroffs) hadn’t come up. Actually, I read all of their works, and Paul Lovejoy’s, in order to write a comprehensive paper on this very topic. It wasn’t very enjoyable reading, but eh.
However, in this case, I’ll just let that pass as I can tell you are only saying this in order to discredit my position since your rhetorical BS doesn’t impress someone like me that is familiar with the authors you are discussing.
Note: I never stated that I agreed with Miers and Kopytoff. So the rest of your comment is kind of moot.
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Actually, I really want to know, since you’ve continued to push that point in further comments: why do you always presume that you are the only one who is informed on EVERY topic? Or do you not actually believe that, but you simply argue that to automatically refute the other side?
I mean, really. I was actually thinking you and I could agree on this since we’ve read the same works. But I guess I was wrong: if there is a single sentence that disagrees with The-Great-Professor-Thaddeus-Teacher-of-the-Universe, then it’s all downhill from there and a 50 comment back and forth of debate. My fault! I should’ve let you reign over this post and remain unchallenged, as you like to have it with every post.
Abagond might as well make this a private blog for just you, Thaddeus. Since everyone else’s thoughts, informed or not, are irrelevant.
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What if African slavery was discovered to be far more cruel than American slavery? would the “Africans sold their people as slaves” argument be more valid then? no. so why all the chatter?
It only matters which was worse if you want to point the finger and say “your people are bad.” (anyone doing so on either side of the debate isn’t worth listening to imo.) Many white people seem to think this is what is happening when someone brings up slavery. The “my family didn’t have slaves” argument is a form of self defense. It’s a way to say “stop attacking me i’m a good person” but of course it isn’t personal even if your family DID own slaves. It isn’t about going around blaming individual WP for slavery. Having privilege doesn’t automatically make you a bad person. What matters is that WP take an honest look at how we continue to benefit from the advantages bestowed upon us by slavery and Jim Crow
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Are you implying that I didn’t read the book?
Forgive me, but it didn’t sound like you had, given that it seemed you’d been implying that the book had been written by them. It seemed as if you’re saying “their” book made one definition of slavery when, in fact, there are many conflicting definitions of it being presented in the book.
why do you always presume that you are the only one who is informed on EVERY topic?
First of all, because I only write serious posts on things which touch on my areas of expertise. You don’t see me, for example, spouting off on the whole Bethany thing because, frankly, I know little about white people who claim black criminals did bad things to them.
I DO know a bit about the Atlantic slave trade and Africa.
Secondly, because most of the people who post on these topics – let’s say 19 out of 20 – have never got beyond wikipedia, one book by their pet author on the topic and maybe vague memories of an undergraduate class which touched upon it years ago. Hell, even Abagond gets a lot of the info which he writes about straight off the wiki.
In the discussion above, the vast majority of posters really have no notion of what they’re talking about. They’re repeating some pop opinions that they picked up here and there without really thinking them through. It’s so bad that Mel thinks she’s being righteous when she claims that M&K are “eurocentric” – precisely the two authors who have the most to teach her if she wants to really claim there’s a huge difference between African and European slavery.
I COULD presume the other way and then be wrong 19 out of 20 times.
Why bother?
But I guess I was wrong: if there is a single sentence that disagrees with The-Great-Professor-Thaddeus-Teacher-of-the-Universe, then it’s all downhill from there and a 50 comment back and forth of debate.
[Shrugs]
You’ll notice that I’m not slapping folks with ad hominems, nor being outraged by their opinions, something which many of the posters here engage in. That’s pretty odd behavior for someone who’s supposedly so intellectually arrogant, especially in on-line culture where flaming is considered de riguer but logical argument and dialogue is considered condescending.
Abagond might as well make this a private blog for just you, Thaddeus. Since everyone else’s thoughts, informed or not, are irrelevant.
How does what I write block – in any way, shape, or form – other peoples’ thoughts, Natasha? this isn’t a dinner and I’m not shouting and drowning out other people. I could write a 10 page screed and all you’d need to do is page down over it. So it’s simply rhetoric – and not very intelligent rhetoric at that – to claim that my thoughts somehow prevent other peoples’ thoughts from being expressed.
And if I thought they were irrelevant, would I bother to respond to them in the first place?
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@Jason,
What if African slavery was discovered to be far more cruel than American slavery? would the “Africans sold their people as slaves” argument be more valid then? no. so why all the chatter?
Apparently, some people think it would.
But the driving force behind this debate isn’t a concern with what slavery was, Jason: it’s a concern with making “white people” accountable for what’s presumed to be exclusively – or almost exclusivey – “their” sin 250 years ago.
That’s why some people feel it’s so important to “correctly” situate slavery: today’s politics, not what really happened way back when.
The “my family didn’t have slaves” argument is a form of self defense.
And sometimes it’s a needed defence. When someone says it to say “Forget about racism and slavery, it dosen’t need to be discussed,” then it’s a bullshit political maneuver. When someone says – as happens to me about once a week here – “Your people enslaved my people and that makes you a worthless human being who has no right to a political opinion of any sort on any tpice which I deem off limits”, then one is quite justified in saying it.
It isn’t about going around blaming individual WP for slavery.
A significant part of today’s political rhetoric does precisely this. I cans how you several examples in the comments of this blog, if you like.
What matters is that WP take an honest look at how we continue to benefit from the advantages bestowed upon us by slavery and Jim Crow.
Perhaps, but what “we” is this to begin with, Jason? Those privileges were not handed out in anything like a homogenous or equal fashion. Without an analysis of how other factors come into play, it’s pretty useless.
Also, the whole “privilege” thing is rather rhetorical screaming at the skies. We’ve been tossing this ball back and forth for awhile here and still no one has been able to give us a decent definition of “privilege”. Most of the time it gets used here, it means “Something which I presume you and all people like you have which I don’t”. It’s what Mira calls “The Oppression Olympics”.
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Thaddeus
“It seemed as if you’re saying “their” book made one definition of slavery when, in fact, there are many conflicting definitions of it being presented in the book.”
There is an overarching definition, which is no clear definition, due to a variety of factors. I thought I’d said that earlier…
“First of all, because I only write serious posts on things which touch on my areas of expertise. “
I guess 95 percent of the topics here are your area of expertise then.
“Secondly, because most of the people who post on these topics – let’s say 19 out of 20 – have never got beyond wikipedia […]”
You never even gave anyone a chance to clarify their position here, without being snarky. One comment, and *bam* you reply, with the know-it-all-o-meter turned up to its loudest. That’s not very conducive to discussion; at least save the meter for after discussion has actually taken place. But I guess he who shouts the loudest is the right-est.
Abagond, that’s what this is supposed to be, right — a discussion? Just to clarify; I’m somewhat confused because 75 percent of the comments are Thaddean monologue.
You’ve used plenty of ad hominems here, Thad; your arguments seem irrevocably tied to them, so I have no idea where you’re going with that one.
“And if I thought they were irrelevant, would I bother to respond to them in the first place?”
In order to make sure everyone else knows how irrelevant, misinformed, and plain stupid the rest of the comments are. You know, because someone might actually read them and think they’re relevant — horrors.
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@ Natasha W:
Yes, this is supposed to be a discussion.
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Jason said:
“What if African slavery was discovered to be far more cruel than American slavery? would the “Africans sold their people as slaves” argument be more valid then? no. so why all the chatter?”
Because Thad wanted to derail by talking about African slavery. But I do not mind since it only proved the point of the post better than I ever could.
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Thad:
When you make everyone feel like ignorant scum because you assume they have not read as many books as you have on a subject THAT IS an ad hominem. Because you are attacking not their statements but them. I forget where you said it, but even according to you that is the sign of someone who does not know what they are talking about.
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I guess 95 percent of the topics here are your area of expertise then.
Of the top 15 posts here, I wrote large comments on the following six (25%):
* Africans sold their own people as slaves
* American privilege
* Mothers are the reason there are so many single women
* How to talk to white people about racism
* John Brown
* Tim Wise
Two of these are on the history of slavery. Three are in regards to white people and slavery/racism. One is in regards to gender conflict. One is in regards to the U.S. and how it’s seen in the world. Given that race and gender are pretty much what I study, within a post-imperial context, with the U.S. and Brazil as my primary areas of interest, I’d say I’m keeping my focus fairly tight.
The FBI/COINTELPRO stuff is also within my area of study and I wrote a bit about it, but there’s really not much to say as everyone seems to agree about the basic coordinates of what went on.
You never even gave anyone a chance to clarify their position here, without being snarky.
I admit that I’m snarky, but it’s generally when someone’s doing their own posturing or otherwise being a jerk. And I give people every chance in the world to clarify their position. I’ll happily listen to someone who says “You’re not getting what I’m saying. This is what I mean”. Most people choose not to clarify their positions here because they really don’t have a position to clarify, just a general feeling about things backed up by some warmed over rhetoric and an infinite capacity to be offended.
You’ve used plenty of ad hominems here, Thad; your arguments seem irrevocably tied to them, so I have no idea where you’re going with that one.
Take a look at the above and show me where you think I started tossing ad hominems first. About the worst that you can say I did was claim that Mel was under-read.
As for this being a monologue, practically every single post here has been a direct response to something someone has said.
Why don’t you just claim that I’m a witch, a devil-worshipper and a thoroughly evil man, Natasha? It seems to be your point, regardless of evidence, so just get on with it.
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Thad:
When you say, in so many words, “I know more than you so STFU”, that is not a discussion. In effect it is an ad hominem since you are making it about you and them, not about statements and why they are wrong or right.
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When you make everyone feel like ignorant scum because you assume they have not read as many books as you have on a subject THAT IS an ad hominem.
Yeah, it would be if I ever did anything of the sort.
I have never claimed that people are “ignorant scum”, Abagond, and you damned well know it. I have never or even IMPLIED that a person is “scum” because they haven’t read a book I’ve read or whatever.
I HAVE said that some peoples’ claims are ignorant, yes, and that’s a simple opinion based on what they were saying.
“Scum”? No way. Be honest.
I forget where you said it, but even according to you that is the sign of someone who does not know what they are talking about.
Sorry, I DO think that someone who’s trying to engage with complex historical phenomena and who does not bother to read anything about what they are trying to engage with is indeed being willfully ignorant. This is presuming that they CAN read and have access to books. Someone who thinks “Gee, I can learn the history of Africa off of wikipedia” is being ignorant. No, you can’t. Sorry.
You have another opinion there?
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“Because Thad wanted to derail by talking about African slavery. But I do not mind since it only proved the point of the post better than I ever could.”
😀
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When you say, in so many words, “I know more than you so STFU”, that is not a discussion.
Yeah, it WOULD be if I ever said STFU to someone who disagreed with me. The only person I’ve every said STFU to here was J when he was involved in a largescale ad hominem attack. And even then, I appologized.
I HAVE said “Ferchrissake, if this is important to you, then READ about it. Here’s some stuff you can look at.”
That is hardly telling people to STFU.
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Whoops! 6 out of 15 is of course 40%, not 25. Durrr.
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Thad:
I do not want to get into a long debate about this, but on this very thread you presumed you knew what Natasha W and Mel have read. You presumed to know how much experience Mel has of Africa. You discredited both Mel and Victoria by belittling the state of their knowledge. Those are ad hominems. They are also completely unnecessary. If someone is wrong you simply point out why. Someone can drop out of high school and still be right. Someone can have a PhD and still be wrong.
Some commenters have said unkind things about you, like Jasmin and Ankhesen, so I can understand you being not so nice towards them. But Victoria has NEVER crossed you before this thread as far as I can remember. So the way you acted towards her was completely uncalled for.
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I don’t even want to be bothered to do this since I’m certainly no stranger to ad homs myself, but since you asked:
Ad hominems by Thaddeus —
To Mel:
“But like most Americans, you seem to think that reading books which don’t agree with you will somehow taint your ideological purity.”
Using a persons country of origin (even though it’s not actually their country of origin…) to discredit a view. [Abusive ad hominem]
To Ankhesen:
“No debate at all is required as long as we toe the line and agree with everything you say, Ank.
Yes, we get it. You wrote an entire article about it. In fact, you have an entire website dedicated to being suprised that anyone could dare disagree with your well-reasoned and polite opinions.”
Bringing in irrelevancies (a website) in order to discredit a view. [Circumstantial ad hominem]
To Mel:
“Have you done any of that in Africa? If you have, why make assine comments like “African slavery wasn’t as cruel as European slavery”? I mean, I’d expect that statement to come out of the mouth of a Yank who’s only experience with life outside the U.S. has been at the Disney’s “It’s a Small World” ride. >:D”
Abusive ad hominem
To Mel:
“Oh, but that’s right: you don’t DO history, do you? You do heroic fantasy.”
Abusive ad hominem
To Hathor:
“The problem with non-academics is that they think a bit they learned in a freshman class decades ago or something they barely remember from the telly yesterday qualifies as “an informed opinion” and they see implications in their often-conspiratorial understandings of the world.”
”
To all:
“I always wonder what most of the people posting here would think about slavery back in, say 1750. Frankly, I think most commentators would be spouting the popular dogmas of THAT period just like the spout the popular dogmas of today.”
”
To Mel:
But the fact of the matter is, Mel, that even when I point you to a book that could be used to support your position and shove it right under your nose and say “Here, look at this… Even when I do THAT, you’re such a broken record and so allergic to actually READING WORDS ON A PRINTED PAGE that”
”
“You’re playing the fool, Mel. And a very ignorant fool at that.”
“
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Natasha,
I’d add that he presumed to know the thoughts of people who didn’t even comment on this thread–apparently Thad is related to Miss Cleo.
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Thad also presumed that I thought African slavery was not all that bad when I said no such thing.
@ Natasha W:
Thanks for the compilation.
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“When you make everyone feel like ignorant scum because you assume they have not read as many books as you have on a subject THAT IS an ad hominem.”
It’s not about feeling like scum because we have actually read the exact same books. I wasn’t following along on this discussion, but I happened to click on King’s comment and saw Kopytoff and Miers and thought I’d add to it. When Thad later showed that he’d also read it, I thought “Great, maybe we’ll agree on something; this doesn’t happen often”. But nope.
It was only when I was looking back just now for ad hominems that I saw Thad had made this comment:
All of those works, except the first, I’ve read thoroughly and some I own. I mentioned Lovejoy without even knowing Thad commented about him, since one of my undergrad advisors was a colleague of his. Yet Thad still managed to pick a nit from the bit that we disagreed upon. I should’ve seen that coming.
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Thad,
“Why don’t you just claim that I’m a witch, a devil-worshipper and a thoroughly evil man, Natasha? It seems to be your point, regardless of evidence, so just get on with it.”
Huh?
Just relax. I only think you’re being unnecessarily presumptuous and arrogant when you could easily not be. Discussion was effectively shut down due to the way you’ve engaged people here, and for some reason I think that’s not what you wanted. Am I right?
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lol I’ve only been commenting here for a few weeks and I could compile a decent compilation myself if I felt like scrolling through old threads. I do remember something about me being a college student or recent grad which is not only way off, it’s an irrelevant ad hominem.
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I do not want to get into a long debate about this, but on this very thread you presumed you knew what Natasha W and Mel have read.
I presume that Mel hasn’t read much because she apparently hasn’t. She has, as you can see from what I’ve written above, an open invitation to prove me wrong.
I presumed that Natasha hasn’t read the M&K book because it seemed that she was claiming it was something it wasn’t. And look at my arrogant, presumptive, non-dialogic reaction when Natasha said she HAD read it:
Forgive me, but it didn’t sound like you had, given that it seemed you’d been implying that the book had been written by them.
That’s telling someone “STFU, you ignorant scum?”, Abagond?
Go on…
You discredited both Mel and Victoria by belittling the state of their knowledge.
Where, exactly did I do this? I claimed that they obviously hadn’t read a damned thing about African slavery and it’s very apparent that they haven’t if, as they imply, they feel it was a “kinder, gentler” slavery.
That’s not an ad hominem: it’s a frank appraisal of their opinions.
If someone is wrong you simply point out why.
I did, at length.
Someone can drop out of high school and still be right. Someone can have a PhD and still be wrong.
No kidding. My grandfather was a truck driver and knew more about history than most college graduates I know. but then again, he read widely about the topics which interested him. People who try to judge history without reading it are rarely right, whether or not they have PhDs.
But Victoria has NEVER crossed you before this thread as far as I can remember. So the way you acted towards her was completely uncalled for.
Vicky was claiming that slaves in African slavery maintained their humanity and one of the keys to this was that Africans married their slaves. She was so emphatic about this that she put it in negrito. And she said she got this info through her readings in literature. Now let’s look at my totally incidiary, ad hominem response to her, shall we?
So please… if you’re the kind of person who thinks slave/master relationships in the Americas were necessarily rape because the woman had no choice, don’t try to make slave/master relationships in Africa into some sort of loving and peaceful ideal.
[roll eyes]
You need to stop reading so much lit, Victoria, and read a little more African history.
As for the belief that slaves in the Americas lost their humanity, again, please read more history.
Wow! How brutal and uncalled for! Snarky, yes, perhaps. Calling someone “scum” and telling them to STFU? WtF?
Yeah, that’s really telling someone to STFU, Abagond and calling them scum.
And if you feel my “snarkiness” was “uncalled for”, Abagond, I invite you to contemplate what kind of responses I would have gotten if I had suggested that sexual contact between masters and slaves in the EUROPEAN context “proved” that white people saw their slaves as human beings. “Snarky” isn’t half of what I would have gotten in return and you damned well know it.
And poor, defenseless Vicky responded to this utterly evil “ad hominem” with two entire posts saying that I’m not worth listening to because I disagreed with her. Did she bring up any information to back her claims up? No. She simply said, basically, “They’re true because I say they are”, EXACTLY the sort of STFU-I’m-the-ultimate-authority-here crap you’re accusing me of promulgating.
Abagond, why the are you white-knighting a person, who’s hardly been mortally insulted and who has hardly been polite in her response? Is she a RL friend, or what?
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@Abagond
Thad also presumed that I thought African slavery was not all that bad when I said no such thing.
Did I? Where?
What I said is this:
MIRA
Did I miss something or did abagond state that slavery on the continent of Africa wasn’t bad/awful/etc?
THAD
Has he stated that somewhere? Because he certainly doesn’t state it in this post.
And you haven’t. Have you somewhere else?
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@thad: Hey man, you need to chill out. Take it easy a bit. We all know you have studied and read a lot and you are smart and so on, but take a breather once a while, bro. No need for overkill. This is just some people talkin about something.
Sometimes it feels like you’re on speed or something? 😀
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Natasha, how would you like a compilation of the comments those posters have made regarding myself which provoked those impolite remarks of mine?
For example, you think that it’s an outrageous ad hominem for me to say, of Mel: “But like most Americans, you seem to think that reading books which don’t agree with you will somehow taint your ideological purity.”
Before this, Mel accused me of being an “Eurocentric, white apologists with a condescending attitude” and “the equivalent of Dr. Laura, Don Imus and a slew of others who get caught using the n-word, turning around and saying ‘rappers use the n-word, too’.”
I most CERTAINLY did not start tossing around the ad hominems there, Natasha. MEL started tossing around the ad hominems, not yours truly and MEL upped the ante on every occasion that you’re listing here.
In fact, this is the same sort of behavior that you’re accusing Mel of on another post, so please don’t try to cast this commentator as a poor, innocent person who was blindly and visciously attacked by evil, old Thad. 😛
Regarding Ank Mié, she and I have had repeated run-ins on several occasions and she rarely responds to a post I’m on unless it’s to make a snarky cut at myself. I just return the favor and I’ll be happy to stop this game whenever Ank does. The comment she makes above, that I respond to, is quite clearly an example of this.
Regarding Hathor, you are so wrapped up in your little “let’s roast Thad” crusade that you apparently don’t even realize that my comment to her (“Abusive ad hominem
To Hathor:
“The problem with non-academics is that they think a bit they learned in a freshman class decades ago or something they barely remember from the telly yesterday qualifies as “an informed opinion” and they see implications in their often-conspiratorial understandings of the world.”) was nothing more than a repeat of her previous comment to me, with the roles switched.
So here’s my question to you, Natasha, and I repeat it:
Can you give me an example of where I started tossing ad hominems at people without their having started it first?
None of the stuff in that “compilation” fits that category.
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Dear Sam, I have six people above who are basically taking the piss for whatever reason and I should calm down?
As for what I’ve read or not, what possible relevance does that have to the fact that folks have basically decided to make me Monday’s piñata?
I have no problems with ad hominem attacks and stupid crap like that. I DO have problems with lies and arrant hypocrisy.
When Natasha makes claims to the effect that I attacked poor lil’ old Hathor when all I did was fire her original comment right back at her, then Natasha is simply trying to stir up shit and I’m happy to give it back to her.
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I do remember something about me being a college student or recent grad which is not only way off, it’s an irrelevant ad hominem.
Yeah, Jason, because “college student” and “recent grad” are well known viscious insults.
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Thad:
Ad hominem is not the same as slander. An ad hominem can be perfectly true in and of itself but it is still a logical fallacy – and it still gets people angry and screws up discussions – because it attacks the person and not the statements made.
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@Natasha
Yet Thad still managed to pick a nit from the bit that we disagreed upon. I should’ve seen that coming.
What nit?
You didn’t say a damned thing about having read the book and, if you read your comments, you can easily see why I could believe that you haven’t. And when you said you HAD read the book, did I tell you “STFU, you don’t know s*** about it?”
No. I appologized, explained why I thought you hadn’t read it and said what I thought about M&K’s argument.
Hardly nit-picking, Natasha. And CERTAINLY not cutting off dialogue and refusing to discuss things.
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Abagond, an ad hominem is attacking the person themselves instead of their ideas. In every case above, I have very carefully explained why I disagreed with a person’s ideas. I have not in a single instance said “You don’t know crap because you are an X-type of person, so STFU.”
I made NO ad hominem attack against your friend Victoria. I made no attacks of the sort against Mel until she started tossing names at me.
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Thad,
“…you think that it’s an outrageous ad hominem for me to say, of Mel: “But like most Americans, you seem to think that reading books which don’t agree with you will somehow taint your ideological purity.”
Before this, Mel accused me of being an “Eurocentric, white apologists with a condescending attitude”
This was in RESPONSE to you saying:
“Mel, seriously: READ some good histories about African slavery”
Which I forgot to include on the ad hom list. Thanks for the heads up.
“In fact, this is the same sort of behavior that you’re accusing Mel of on another post, so please don’t try to cast this commentator as a poor, innocent person who was blindly and visciously attacked by evil, old Thad.”
The debate with Mel on the other post didn’t have anything to do with ad homs, but her actual argument.
And I never said no one else threw out ad hominems. Pretty much everyone here has (on this blog, not necessarily this post). But they didn’t ask me to “show” them because they know they have.
“Regarding Hathor, you are so wrapped up in your little “let’s roast Thad” crusade that you apparently don’t even realize that my comment to her … was nothing more than a repeat of her previous comment to me, with the roles switched.”
Yes, I did notice. But again, none of them asked me, more than once, to point out their ad hominems. Only you did.
The originalpoint of contention was not whether “s/he did it first” but whether you used ad hominems in this post: “You’ll notice that I’m not slapping folks with ad hominems…”. Which I’ve showed you have, numerous times.
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Thad:
In your opinion. Which it should be very obvious by now I don’t think very highly of, so you can stop offering.
I guess we’re done now, right? Anything else?
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Mel, seriously: READ some good histories about African slavery.
Oh, yeah. That’s a viscious, evil ad hominem, no doubt. ESPECIALLY as it was embedded in a context where I explained in detail why one can’t presume that African slavery was “less cruel” or “more human” than European slavery. You’re right, Natasha. Those are CLEARLY fighting words which attack Mel’s being instead of her ideas. That’s a real good ad hominem there. [roll eyes]
Come on, give it up: you know very well what an ad hominem is and telling someone to read a book, after you’ve explained why their ideas are incorrect, is NOT an ad hominem. You’re not a fool, so quit playing the role.
The debate with Mel on the other post didn’t have anything to do with ad homs, but her actual argument.
EXACTLY as my argument above. But Mel certainly seems to think you’re dissing her, simply for disagreeing with her, doesn’t she? EXACTLY as she does above.
Yes, I did notice. But again, none of them asked me, more than once, to point out their ad hominems. Only you did.
No, I did not ask you to point out my ad hominems. Here is EXACTLY what I said:
Take a look at the above and show me where you think I started tossing ad hominems first. About the worst that you can say I did was claim that Mel was under-read.
And now that we’ve got back PRECISELY to the point which I’ve already taken responsability for – i.e. claiming that Mel was under-read – can we agree on the simple fact that there’s not a single instance of me firing off an ad hominem without having received one first?
Or would you like to answer my original question and show me where I do that in the post above?
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@Natasha
The originalpoint of contention was not whether “s/he did it first” but whether you used ad hominems in this post: “You’ll notice that I’m not slapping folks with ad hominems…”. Which I’ve showed you have, numerous times.
I’ll admit to firing back a few ad hominems when people toss them my way, just like you. Even when I do, however, I try to focus on why I disagree with the person’s ideas and not their person.
This is outrageous and unacceptable behavior in your book?
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Africans sold their own people as slaves
so did Europeans. . .
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@Natasha
In your opinion. Which it should be very obvious by now I don’t think very highly of, so you can stop offering.
I guess we’re done now, right? Anything else?
How about if I act JUST LIKE YOU when responding to comments, Natasha?
I mean, seeing as how you’re so high-minded, noble and all, right?
Right…?
Presumptions:
Hence why it is fundamentally dishonest for him to present himself as trying to see both sides of the situation; he already made up his mind before he entered the discussion as to what black women are and how they feel.
Calling people under-read (an ad hominem, according to you:
No, you came in here agreeing with one side of the argument; you didn’t even fully read the discussion, as you admitted. Do yourself a favor next time and actually read the whole thing before you decide to offer your opinion.
Being upset with other commentator’s arrogant presumptions:
You’re not the “police” yet you feel the need to go around to posts telling commenters whenever their comments, directed at other people and not yourself, are “inappropriate”, “arrogant”, etc.
Ad hominems:
Thanks, Captain-Save-A-Lot, but we’ve got this under control.
Telling people to STFU:
Unless you’re going to be fair — Mind your own business.
Being respectful of other commentators’ feeling:
No one cares how you “felt” about anything. ,/em>
Accusing other posters of whining:
Furthermore, you have some nerve to be whining about misinterpreting comments since you obviously misinterpreted mine.
More presumptions:
No, you’re obsessed with thinking that because you live a few miles away you’re leaps and bounds better than other people. It’s actually quite pathetic that you always feel the need to bring others down to prop yourself up. Isn’t that one of the symptoms of low self-esteem?
Specific admonitions that Mel doesn’t apparently know how to read:
Mel, read carefully.
More presumptions:
But this a pattern for her. She tends to always say something stereotypical and/or negative about black American people or black American women. Not Africans, not West Indians, just black Americans. She clearly feels superior as a black Canadian.
Insulting other countries:
This is why Canada will forever be the U.S.’s hat. Lol.,
Calling female commentators b*tches:
I’m sorry, I’d usually never say this: but b*tch please!
…then claiming that you did no such thing:
And once again, I did not call her a b*tch.
…and all this on one thread in the past three days.
Rest assured, Natasha, I’ll be closely watching your behavior and modeling mine on yours, seeing as how you’re such a rational person who’s into dialogue. abvoe all else.
I guess we’re done now, right? Anything else?
I guess, unless you’d like to showcase a bit more hypocrisy.
(Hey Abagond, get I get a cooky for making this compilation of Natasha’s Greatest Hits? I mean, you seem to think she’s doing the community a service with her listing of mine…)
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@CoL
so did Europeans. . .
Indeed they did. By the boatload.
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Thad,
“Come on, give it up: you know very well what an ad hominem is and telling someone to read a book, after you’ve explained why their ideas are incorrect, is NOT an ad hominem.”
Saying that they haven’t read any “good books” is an ad hominem, because you’re attacking the person’s knowledge/background. You know this and that’s why you used it in the first place. That’s how you’ve attacked nearly everyone on this post.
“You’re not a fool, so quit playing the role.”
Like I said…
You seem unable to make an argument without using some form of ad hominem; it’s like a jerk reaction to you.
“No, I did not ask you to point out my ad hominems. Here is EXACTLY what I said:”
That was the second go around, after you’d already claimed you hadn’t used ad hominems (at all) and I said you had.
“This is outrageous and unacceptable behavior in your book?”
It’s abagond’s blog — what he says goes. If he finds your behavior fine, then I guess it’s okay.
But it’s been a trend on many of the major topics for you to drive away nearly all the commenters due to sheer annoyance. So if you came here to have discussion, then you should probably try to change that. But if you came here simply to posture, exaggerate, and show how many details you remember from books, please continue.
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Thad, great job finding ad hominems from other posts. After I’d already stated that I, like everyone else here, is no stranger to ad hominems. Gold star!
I never thought you’d feel desperate enough to resort to that; you have an arrogant style, but it’s clear you’re now grasping at whatever is able.
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@ Thad
Personally, I could give a f*ck about ad homs as long as they aren’t over the top clutter. In your case it’s not that bad. (the ad homs I mean) But the thing is, if you make rude, dismissive assumptions about people as you unquestionably do, people are going to tune you out and disregard what you say from that point on. I understand the impulse to punctuate remarks with arrogant snarky comments to show off how perceptive I am, but I try to fight it. You might endeavor to do the same if your interested in anyone caring to read your verbose monologues. Or not. Suit yourself.
p.s. arguing the minutia of what is technically an ad hom is beyond exhausting.
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@Jason
…if you make rude, dismissive assumptions about people as you unquestionably do, people are going to tune you out and disregard what you say from that point on.
As has clearly been the case here where apparently half the board has logged on to take a gratuitous swipe at me.
But again, Jason, I’m writing here (often as not) to get my own thoughts in order and to see where the attacks come from and what they will be. I save my “convincing people” shtick for my academic papers and – very ocassionally – the classroom.
p.s. arguing the minutia of what is technically an ad hom is beyond exhausting.
Agreed, but if you knew what I’m actually SUPPOSED to be writing right now, You’ d quickly understand why this is much more fun.
Wanna proof it? 😀
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@ thad
Did Natasha say she never used ad homs? If she did I missed it.
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“As has clearly been the case here where apparently half the board has logged on to take a gratuitous swipe at me.”
Cue the violins.
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@Nat
Saying that they haven’t read any “good books” is an ad hominem, because you’re attacking the person’s knowledge/background.
It WOULD be an ad hominem, if that were the substance of my argument. But like your comment to Mel on the Storro thread, it isn’t. The “read more” comment comes after a long and detailed explanation of what’s wrong with the person’s argument.
So no ad hominem.
Next…
Thad, great job finding ad hominems from other posts. After I’d already stated that I, like everyone else here, is no stranger to ad hominems. Gold star!
I never thought you’d feel desperate enough to resort to that; you have an arrogant style, but it’s clear you’re now grasping at whatever is able.
No, Natasha. I’m quite serious: I’ll use your behavior as my model. After all, I’m not criticizing your behavior: I find it exemplary. Obviously, if I’m doing something quite different than you are, you’d have cause to complain. If I’m not… why, that would mean that you are either a hypocrite or a troll, wouldn’t it?
But thankfully, because I am following your clear and quite appropriate lead as to what is and is not acceptable on this blog – and seeing as how Abagond himself seemingly has no trouble with your style – then I shouldn’t have any worries at all, should I?
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@Jason
Did Natasha say she never used ad homs?
[Shrugs]
Like I said, I admit to taking a few swipes when someone else starts the game. Even then, however, I TRY to concentrate on that person’s argument, not their person.
Just like Natasha… right? 😀
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As has clearly been the case here where apparently half the board has logged on to take a gratuitous swipe at me.
Nice to see you taking your own advice about snarky comments, Jason. 😀
Actually, I have no problems being the bottom person in a pile-up. It’s the hypocrisy which annoys me far more than the complaints.
But my point was, if people are taking the trouble to comb through my comments and respond to them, then they’re obviously reading them, so I guess I can’t complain about too much irrelevance in the social universe of this board.
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To abagond: Can you please tell Thaddeus to not call me “Nat”? I don’t want to make that a trend or have people thinking that’s a nickname I like for myself. My name is just fine.
That’ll be all.
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What I can’t get away from is the fact that Nat’s complaining about me when she actually called another poster a “b*tch”.
And Abagond’s worrued about MY presumptive, dismissive attitude?
Jeezis! Talk about being asleep at the moderation switch. 😀 😀 😀 😀
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Can I call you ‘Sha, then? 😀 It’s a shortening of your handle I’m looking for.
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Ash?
Tash?
Tasha?
Na? (That would be the Portuguese-appropriate short form).
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Feel free to call me Ta, btw. Many Brazilian friends do.
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Thad,
Scroll up. You’ll see (near the top at this point, I’ll presume) a comment in which you said me, Abagond, and Ankhesen would “probably think” something about African slavery…missing the fact that 2 out of the 3 of us (at least) hadn’t even commented on this thread. Maybe you should keep a chat log.
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head to the desk
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@Jasmin:
You’ll see (near the top at this point, I’ll presume) a comment in which you said me, Abagond, and Ankhesen would “probably think” something about African slavery…
Jasmin, this is the comment:
The problem here is that I’m going against the dogmatic grain. If I weren’t, few people would have any problems whatsoever with my arrogance. If I were to post something like “Yeah, those white people were evil bastards and if you’re saying they weren’t basically devils in disguise, you’re either a fool or a villain”, more than half the posters here wouldn’t even blink. Certainly, the only person who’d call me out on my arrogance would be the odd white passerthrough. You wouldn’t hear word one from Abagond, Ank, Witch, Jasmin…
I’m did not say or imply that you responded here.You’ll notice that the topic under discussion isn’t this thread, but me responding to a tangent brought up by someone else. That tangent has to do with my presumed and perceived arrogance.
What I said is that you would hardly call me arrogant if I agreed with you.
You’ve given me advice (“keep a chat log”) so I feel free to respond with the same: read a comment before complaining about it.
Just a friendly suggestion.
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Y’know, if I were a right basterd, I’d log on with a puppet through a U.S.-based proxy and make the same sort of claims I’m making now, in the same sort of tone, but make them emphatically comply to the identity-politics dogma that most posters here seem to hew to.
I bet my left testical no one would find said comments to be “arrogant”, “dismissive”, or “presumptive” in any way, shape or form.
It would violate Abagond’s rules, however, and be cause for expulsion, but it would be DAMNED interesting.
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Gah! Back to work, you lazy, lazy sod!!!
(Anyone wants to proofread a serious article on gringos, let me know.)
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And where is your proof? Besides your imagination…? For someone who likes to write novels on the regular, wouldn’t that be better directed toward what people have said, rather than what they’d hypothetically say? Then again, why you are seemingly obsessed with Internet strangers–specifically younger women–is beyond me.
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Thad:
Please do not call Natasha “Nat”. It is all right to shorten a commenter’s name but not if they do not like it.
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And where is your proof? Besides your imagination…?
My proof of what? My personal opinion? It’s based on my past interactions with you.
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@Abagond
Please do not call Natasha “Nat”. It is all right to shorten a commenter’s name but not if they do not like it.
OK, no probs. So does Natasha get the stern lecture about presumptions and ad hominems today too, or am I the only lucky commentator?
I mean, I can see why calling someone “Nat” would be ever so much more insulting than telling someone “b*tch, please”.
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@ Thad:
“B*tch please” is apparently not insulting. I’m gonna start saying it to my mother and see how she responds.
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Eurasian, are you feeling bitter too? If you’re not familiar with that phrase, than maybe you should spend more time on the internet.
Sheesh, you guys can never keep your “beefs” to one post. The only problem is that I just don’t care whether you feel hurt or not.
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Nah, not bitter Natasha. It’s just amusing how much your appraisal of that term – which might well be valid in your particular context – differs from a lot of other people’s. That’s all.
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If you weren’t bitter, you wouldn’t be bringing your disagreements into posts that have nothing to do with them. Right, so you’re bitter. Just get over it. I doubt abagond wants this to turn into a pity party for hurt feelings.
And prove me wrong (on the other post) if you’re so torn up about it; so far you haven’t done that.
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Arghhhhhhhhh…………………
What a petty, personal, b&tching and boring discussion this has now turned into!!!
I, like I am guessing, a lot of people, thought this post was long overdue and well presented by Abagond. That is before it inevitably got derailed. Something I have watched and seen time and time again.. (Not mentioning any names of course as it probably wasn’t their intention – THADDEUS)
And it has to be said, Thaddeus, for someone who has by far posted the most responses on this particular topic. Its almost as if you really wanted everyone else here to STFU!!! Either that or bow to your superior intellectual wisdom and knowledge. Notwithstanding the fact your only a “white gringo” (in your terms) who happens to have “some” better informed knowledge of the Transatlantic Slave trade than (some of us) Afrocentric dogmatic Negroes and Negresses!!!
Of course you wouldn’t even think that because that would be highly insulting and condescending in a predominately Black forum like this. Wouldn’t it? Or Maybe not? After all Slavery is Slavery and all forms are or were equally evil, vile and immoral. But all peoples are equally capable, culpable and have perpetrated such practices in the past (even present) – Africans as well as Europeans. Yes???
Just in case some people don’t get what I am saying here I am being SARCASTIC!!!!
I don’t believe, Thaddeus, you have, despite all your readings and studies, a deep understanding of what the African Transatlantic Slave trade was. And I can say that after having read extensively through your posts on this thread (and few others). You see there is one thing you, for some reason, seem incapable of reflecting in your “intellectually rigorous” postings and that is a genuine feeling of empathy or spiritually connectedness. For you its just one more intellectual, abstract debate. Of course I am not saying it isn’t this. It is…BUT ITS MORE!!! That is for some of us its more.
Question is do you feel that? Or is that too nebulous and inarticulate a concept for you to relate to? Is it a meaningless and too vague undefined consideration?
For me one one the best and detailed accounts of the horrors of slavery can be found in CLR James’s classic – The Black Jacobians.
Not only are detailed and graphic descriptions given about what slavery involved (centering on the Haitian peoples) but an inspiring account of insurrection by slaves and the only successful slave revolt in History. Something to remember when considerations of African or European or any other systems of slavery are debated and discussed.
Haiti is the legacy of African Transatlantic Slavery today as this well summarized article on CLR James Black Jacobians testifies.
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=639&issue=126
It also flies in the face of Thaddeus’s contention in this thread that “HISTORY=SCIENCE”.
What B$LLS*ITT that is for any social scientist to say!!!!
This is why Racism exists because “official views” on history continue to be challenged by those people it seeks to exclude!!!!
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So now that NatashaW has establioshed that “b*tch please” is not an insult, can we say it to her, Abagond?
I mean, apparently this has your blessing.
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@Kwamla
(Not mentioning any names of course as it probably wasn’t their intention – THADDEUS)
You sly and subtle devil, you. ;D
Let’s apply Abagond’s new understandings regarding ad hominem attacks, to this post, shall we?
Notwithstanding the fact your only a “white gringo” (in your terms) who happens to have “some” better informed knowledge of the Transatlantic Slave trade than (some of us) Afrocentric dogmatic Negroes and Negresses!!!
Yeah, I do have a better informed opinion about the Transatlantic trade than some of the people posting here, some of whom are indeed black and some of whom are indeed dogmatic and who claim to be afrocentric (not that we’ve seen any proof of that other than chest-thumping and name-calling).
Apparently, this pisses you off.
Tough.
You want to tackle my arguments? Go ahead, I’m game. If you want to claim that they can’t be valid because I don’t have the proper quantity of melanin in my skin, then that, my friend, is an ad hominem.
Of course you wouldn’t even think that because that would be highly insulting and condescending in a predominately Black forum like this.
Of course, because to PROPERLY show respect to someone, you need to agree with everything they say, no matter how poorly informed.
Is that it?
After all Slavery is Slavery and all forms are or were equally evil, vile and immoral. But all peoples are equally capable, culpable and have perpetrated such practices in the past (even present) – Africans as well as Europeans. Yes???
Of course, as I’ve said a half dozen times above. My beef is with both folks who think the translatlantic trade was no big deal “because Africans sold their own” and people like Victoria who think that African slavery was somehow “kinder and gentler” because certain forms of it recognized marriage with slaves.
I’ve not made any comment at all as to one or another form of slavery being “better” or “worse”, but Mel, Vindicator and Victoria have, so perhaps you should go froth at them some, neh? 😀
You see there is one thing you, for some reason, seem incapable of reflecting in your “intellectually rigorous” postings and that is a genuine feeling of empathy or spiritually connectedness.
Nope, I probably don’t and – get this – NEITHER DO YOU, though I’m sure you’re going to work yourself up into a self-righteous lather claiming that you do. You have no idea what those people went through, not really. You have no more “spiritual” connection to them than any other human on the planet. Simple fact. Get over it.
For me one one the best and detailed accounts of the horrors of slavery can be found in CLR James’s classic – The Black Jacobians.
Ahn. So let me get this straight: your sense of “spiritual linkage” comes through READING BOOKS, exactly as mine does.
Go on…
Not only are detailed and graphic descriptions given about what slavery involved (centering on the Haitian peoples) but an inspiring account of insurrection by slaves and the only successful slave revolt in History.
The ONLY one, huh? You’re sure about that, are you?
It also flies in the face of Thaddeus’s contention in this thread that “HISTORY=SCIENCE”.
No, history does not “=” science: history IS A science.
What B$LLS*ITT that is for any social scientist to say!!!!
I guess you’re the kind of guy who thinks it’s bulls*** for priests to proclaim their faith in god, then, given that you seem to think that social scientists shouldn’t believe that social science exists.
This is why Racism exists because “official views” on history continue to be challenged by those people it seeks to exclude!!!!
Instead of frothing and ranting like you’re doing, Kwamla, maybe you could tell us what “official view” of history that I’m supporting? The view that Africans are members of the human race, with all the pitfalls and warts that that entails?
What?
So you have anything of substance to add as a critique, or is this one long rant about how I’m a jerk because I dare to have an opinion?
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@Thad
But the fact of the matter is, Mel, that even when I point you to a book that could be used to support your position and shove it right under your nose and say “Here, look at this. This is where you can find some stuff to back up your views that European and African slavery were qualitiatively different”
Once again you’re missing the point. I don’t think you get that NO ONE here CARES to appoint you as their teacher on Africa. No one cares for your opinions/teachings/bookclub sign-up. If anyone here wants to read MORE books (and unlike you I am assuming they’ve read books on African before), then they’ll find their own books. They don’t care to have you create a reading list for them. That’s what you’re NOT getting.
You ego needs to be deflated.
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most CERTAINLY did not start tossing around the ad hominems there, Natasha. MEL started tossing around the ad hominems, not yours truly and MEL upped the ante on every occasion that you’re listing here.
You sound like a child. I am not surprised. You’re looking for validation–for all these Afrocentric, poorly-read nobodies on this board to recognize your superior knowledge…because you’re an intellectual.
You pop the blood vessels in your intellectual head trying to convince people (out of the kindness of heart) that African slavery was equal to European, transatlantic slavery and chiding and talk down to them when they disagree.
If you were really smart, and we know you’re the most knowledgeable person on Africa [wink], then you’d have known you’d never win this debate.
It’s fitting that while you argue that African slavery was the same as the European one, you also argue that Brazilian slavery was more ‘humane’ than the American one.
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So you guys are astill rguing which slavery was/ is better than the other and is Thad more informed than anyone here on this subject?
I think no slavery was/is better than the other. Slavery is slavery. Period.
Thad is well read guy, but of course he doesn’t know everything. I think that is clear to everyone. He may know somethings better than somebody else, but he doesn’t know everything. I think anyone with an ounce of brains knows that. He just comes out that way, being right all the time, in his mind.
But I thoughed that the subject here was how some use this argument “Africans sold slaves too” to diminish the importance of the US slavery. I may be wrong here, but I got that impression from somewhere :-D.
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Thank you, Kwamla. It had to be said.
And thank you for your whole post. I agree with every single word.
Now, it is not too late to get back to the actual point of Abagond’s post.
In discussions about slavery the “Africans sold Africans” meme is used as a derailment tactic. Never to acknowledge the complexity of the slavery phenomenon that Thaddeus eventually pointed out but, quite the contrary, to confuse all types of human servitudes that ever existed into one blurry mess where the European-instigated Slave trade becomes undistinguishable. What Kwamla sarcastically summed up:
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@ Sam
Are you sure?
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One more thing.
I noticed that the “Africans sold Africans” routine is usually closely followed by the “only whites abolished slavery” nonsense.
Because, you know, while everybody else on the planet shares some responsibility in whites’ wrongdoings, white people retain some kind of monopoly on the good deeds…
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@Sam,
Thats right. The subject is:
And its an argument not only white Americans use as reflected in these postings.
I have to wonder where Thaddeus’s musings takes us in this. I had to go back to the beginning to try to gain some prospective of what he is trying to say. I think this conversation with Mel, for me sums it up:
@Thaddeus
For you it seems ALL FORMS OF SLAVERY are, as you put it:
“…a way of forceably acquiring another person’s labor. One does this for MATERIAL gain…”
Which is why you can make the seemingly classic but still valid argument that this is simply a case of “6 of this” or “half a dozen” of that.
Of course you concede that Africa didn’t benefit materially from slavery and that it was a drain on the continent as a whole.
I wonder Thaddeus is there anything else you would want to add about slavery beyond this?
From all your readings and studies of slavery both African, European or any other this is what you would conclude?
Well, I have to say this, at least for me, is woefully too inadequate.
Which is why I said to you and its worth repeating:
The central impact of the African Transatlantic Slave you nonchalantly brush aside is the LEGACY. And its that legacy that connects us and everyone else posting in this forum today and will continue until the day its resolved or addressed.
You cannot (and here is the challenge if you are up for it) point to any other form of slavery (present, past or pre-historic) that has had such an immense and global impact on this planet than the African Holocaust.
You can debate every other form and type there is or has been and then ask yourself why are we not discussing or talking about it here right now?
What is the LEGACY of the African Transatlantic Slave trade? This was the equivalent of wiping out a sizable portion of the planet and just starting again. But not just starting again in the same place. Starting in numerous places scattered all over the rest of the world.
Again, from your detailed knowledge of “history as a science”, tell me when and where this equivalent has occurred on such a scale and over such a long period that it still reverberates in the descendants today?
Thaddeus. You have your own opinions and you are free, as you do, to subject everyone to the benefit of your, supposedly, rigorously and extensively researched views.
I am sure you will continue and enjoy to do this here.
But I for one on connecting with this topic can definitely say I am not “FEELING YOU…..”
But thats ok because I know you probably, as you say, don’t get it either….perhaps again, as you say, because you’ve not found the right book yet.
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@ Dahoman X
Thanks for expressing your views and support on this.
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@kwamla: legacy. That is it.
@dahoman: in my book slavery is slavery. Even if you are de facto ruler as the most powerful in house slave of the Roman emperor, it does not change the fact that you are still at the mercy of the said emperor. Not to mention that when your emperor is gone and the next steps in, you are in deep shit. Which many of these powerful slaves were. Or should I say they were as good as dead. Or litterally dead.
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@Mel
It’s fitting that while you argue that African slavery was the same as the European one, you also argue that Brazilian slavery was more ‘humane’ than the American one.
I don’t know why I should expect anything but ad hominems out of you, but this really takes the cake. This is simply a flat-out lie.
Let’s see if you can get your wee head around the facts:
1) I do not think that african and European slavery ARE THE SAME. I DO think that one can’t reasonably argue that one was “more humane” or “kinder” than the other.
2) I did not argue that Brazilian slavery was more humane than American slavery. I made an example of where such stupidty could lead if one were to presume, as you do, that relative humanity can be measured on a nice, unilineal scale.
Quit playing the idiot, Mel, or at least have the common decency to respond to what I have actually said.
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I think no slavery was/is better than the other. Slavery is slavery. Period.
Which is what my point has been since the beginning. The folks here who are arguing that certain forms of slavery are better than others are Victoria, Mel and Vindicator Sam, so perhaps you should direct your comments to them.
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For you it seems ALL FORMS OF SLAVERY are, as you put it:
“…a way of forceably acquiring another person’s labor. One does this for MATERIAL gain…”
Which is why you can make the seemingly classic but still valid argument that this is simply a case of “6 of this” or “half a dozen” of that.
Nice rhetorical trick, Kwamla, but no. What you’re doing is linking one proposition which I DO make to another which I don’t.
Slavery is indeed a way of foreceably acquiring antoher person’s labor, which one does for material gain. Note that by “labor” I am also including such work (often not considered to be work) as raising children and domestic labor and by “material gain” I mean the ultimate goal is to increase one’s wealth and power, though an intermediate goal might be the direct point of some forms of slavery (i.e. enslaving a political rival in order to gain prestige).
It does not follow, however, that from this basic definition, every single form of slavery is identical – “six of one, half a dozen of the other” as you claim. Just like saying “a house is a structure built for domestic living” doesn’t mean that every house in the world is identical.
Where I don’t see a difference, however, is in regards to the ability to descry a necessary cruelty inherent to a greater or lesser intent in forms of slavery. Relative cruelty or kindness depends on a hell of a lot more than slavery’s formal structural organization, just for starters.
I wonder Thaddeus is there anything else you would want to add about slavery beyond this?
From all your readings and studies of slavery both African, European or any other this is what you would conclude?
Let me get this straight: you want me to draw an aesop-like “just so” conclusion about a hugely complicated phenomenon such as the transatlantic slavery complex?
What sort of simplistic conclusion can one draw other than “It was bad?” or something similar? And what does such a simplistic conclusion motivate us to do in the world? Nothing at all, except to scream self-righteously about past evils.
Does it allow us to do one single thing to sort out those evils? No. For that we’re going to need a much more historically nuanced understanding of what occurred and such an understanding won’t be a blanket which is capable of covering all of African and European experience over the past 500 years of slavery and racism.
But if you really want to DO something, instead of sitting around saying “Racism, colonialism and slavery were BAD, mmmmmm’kay?” it’s that sort of work which needs to be done.
For example, I get the impression that many of the people here are more concerned with discovering who’s REALLY and ultimately to blame for the Rwanda genocide (the Belgians) than they are with actually reading the history of Rwanda and trying to understand its politics in order to see what sort of solution might exist to that particular mess.
In other words, Africa, to most people posting here, is just a convenient fantasy which they use to build their own ethno-political projects. It’s not considered to be a real continent, with real peoples and real histories, but a little black and white morality play. It’s this sort of understanding of Africa which allows BOTH American whites and blacks to dismiss the REAL history of slavery. They are not concerned with africa: they are concerned with dogma, rhetoric and feeling good about themselves in their identity politics projects. Africa, to them, is simply a prop.
And this is where I diverge from Abagond on this post. He complains that racist whites try to derail discussions about slavery and racism with decontexualized fragments of history and this means no resolution takes place. That’s true. But it’s also true that the so-called anti-racist crowd does EXACTLY the same thing. THAT’s where the “six of one, half a dozen of the other” argument comes in, Kwamla, and not regarding slavery, per se.
Just my opinion and, of course, there are exceptions.
The central impact of the African Transatlantic Slave you nonchalantly brush aside is the LEGACY. And its that legacy that connects us and everyone else posting in this forum today and will continue until the day its resolved or addressed.
That’s simplistic rhetoric which is intended to create political power, not a real view of the human or even the African condition. What singular “legacy” is this that you’re on about? There is no “legacy”: their are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of socio-cultural phenomena today which have some of their roots in the slave trade and their is no one “resolution” or way of “addressing” all of these. The “legacy” is plural and contradictory, not singular and easily resolved if we would only just all turn our faces to whatever bright new political dawn is being touted.
There is, in short, nothing that can be done on the rhetorical-political level to save Africa, but as far as I can see, this is pretty much where most of the folks commenting above are safe with staying: in the realm of feel-good “empowering” rhetoric about Mama Africa.
What needs to be done are a thousand – a million – engagements which simply won’t fit into any singular political rhetorical grab-bag, Kwamla. Actions need to take place and those actions need to be historically informed on a level that’s more sophisticated than the 2-color comicbook scheme some posters here seem to be comfortable with.
A small ferinstance: you can complain all you like that it was “the white man” who introduced racism and ethnosegregation to Rwanda and that “he” thus owes Rwanda. That is correct on a rhetorical level, but in real life, the Hutus got PLENTY of help from “the white man”. The 1959 massacre of the Tutsis was aided and abetted by a Belgian coronel who thought that he was helping clear his country’s colonial debt with Rwanda by standing aside as mobs killed Tutsi women and children. France, Belgium and the U.S. pumped Rwanda full of aid and every well-meaning aid program was full of the rhetoric of “clearing our colonial debt to Africa”. And what did that aid do? It simply helped to entrench an extremely segregationalist, authoritarian and ultimately genocidal order.
If any of those westerners had adopted a more incisive view into Rwandan history, one which went beyond “Colonialism bad, helping Africa good”, that neo-colonialism would have withered on the vine. To do THAT, though, they would have needed to treat Rwanda like they would a European country.
Oh, but that would have been “eurocentric”, wouldn’t it? And we all know that Africans are ‘different”…
Suffice it to say, I’m not impressed with sweeping, flowery rhetoric which talks abstractly about Europe’s debt to Africa. Every crappy European intervention project of the last century has been rationalized under that sort of thing, so why should your rhetoric be any different?
You ask me for solutions, Kwamla, but I don’t see you offering any. I just see you standing on a virtual soapbox, tub-thumping and emoting like a pastor in a tent rival.
Nice rhetoric. Where’s the beef?
You cannot (and here is the challenge if you are up for it) point to any other form of slavery (present, past or pre-historic) that has had such an immense and global impact on this planet than the African Holocaust.
Oh, I dunno.
If we see European capitalism as having crawled out of the ruins of Rome (a reasonable view) and we realize that the Roman Empire itself was based on key distinctions between slave and free, barbarian and citizen, I think that you can make a damned good argument that Roman forms of slavery and servitude have had as immense and global impact on the planet as anything else.
This was the equivalent of wiping out a sizable portion of the planet and just starting again. But not just starting again in the same place. Starting in numerous places scattered all over the rest of the world.
Actually, that’s one of the truly dangerous and non-afrocentric portions of your myth. For in spite of all it suffered, Africa was not “wiped out”: its soceities changed, adapted and survived, just as Europe’s did. The diaspora does not render Africa historically invalid, as your rhetoric implies.
Again, from your detailed knowledge of “history as a science”, tell me when and where this equivalent has occurred on such a scale and over such a long period that it still reverberates in the descendants today?
Rome. No doubt.
I’d also say that it’s quite probable we could find something similar in Chinese history, of which I (and I presume you) know very little. You think that the Atlantic World is the center of existence, being as you live in it, but the Far East has always contained more of human history than the Atlantic basin.
But I for one on connecting with this topic can definitely say I am not “FEELING YOU…..”
Yeah. You know why? Because this is a virtual conversation. You know sweet f***-all about myself as a person and I know nothing of you. Any possible “feeling” you could get would be simply a fantasy on your part.
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Thaddeus
I think this is still worth repeating. Despite your lengthy dissertations accusing me, and others posting in this forum, of simply spouting… and I quote your words:
“…feel-good “empowering” rhetoric about Mama Africa…”
Kwamla
I don’t believe, Thaddeus, you have, despite all your readings and studies, a deep understanding of what the African Transatlantic Slave trade was. And I can say that after having read extensively through your posts on this thread (and few others). You see there is one thing you, for some reason, seem incapable of reflecting in your “intellectually rigorous” postings and that is a genuine feeling of empathy or spiritually connectedness. For you its just one more intellectual, abstract debate. Of course I am not saying it isn’t this. It is…BUT ITS MORE!!! That is for some of us its more.
The central impact of the African Transatlantic Slave you nonchalantly brush aside is the LEGACY. And its that legacy that connects us and everyone else posting in this forum today and will continue until the day its resolved or addressed.
You cannot (and here is the challenge if you are up for it) point to any other form of slavery (present, past or pre-historic) that has had such an immense and global impact on this planet than the African Holocaust.
Your response to me on this I find highly enlightening, if not amusing, as it clearly lays bare for everyone to see why I should make such a statement in the first place.
Thaddeus this is an amazing statement to make and provides a key insight into how you perceive the African Transatlantic Slave trade in relations to other forms of slavery. In your way of thinking. They are not really that different are they?
Which is why on anticipating what your likely response would be I previously stated:
Kwamla
You can debate every other form and type there is or has been and then ask yourself why are we not discussing or talking about it here right now?
Some more rhetoric from me would be:
Where are the blogs or forums talking about the impact or legacy of the Roman Empire and its institution of slavery on descendants of slaves today?
And more to the point why aren’t you in them and participating in discussions like you are here?
The fact is your here and talking about the impact of African slavery and its legacy not just in America, but the UK, France, Europe, the world oh… and even Brazil.
Thaddeus. I wonder throughout all your studies, as an impartial researcher, have you come across or made a point of looking at the phenomenon of “White Supremacy”/b> Or do you regard this as a myth?
I say this because from your own postings you appear to be particularly blind to this. For example:
I have to ask in the case of Rwanda. How is it possible to comprehend the genocide that took place there outside a history of the Congo; the Belgians involvement, Colonialism, White Supremacy and ultimately the African Holocaust? How many people are aware that the atrocities committed by the rule of the former Belgian colonial masters far exceeded anything the Rwandan peoples perpetrated on themselves?
Lets say there might be some truth in what you say that most people posting her don’t know much about Africa, her peoples, her politics, her problems and have other less than tasteful agendas. Again what is the context of this?
Dare I say this again the indoctrination of global white supremacy? Or perhaps its me who is fantasizing and lost in some form of conspiratorial quagmire.
Thaddeus on the face of it I think Agabond’s perceptions of the nature and phenomenon of white supremacy are far more attuned than yours which is why myself and a lot of people regular read and post on this blog.
No disrespect but your persistent refusal to try to disentangle yourself from the effects of this pernicious ideology (as it affects both Black and white) has resulted in you alienating yourself from many posters. (I’ve watched it!!)
The following video, I came across, helps to dispel the central myth of this discussion:
“Africans sold their own people as slaves”
placed in the context as it should be of “white supremacy”
Enjoy!!!
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Kwamla,
Without interrupting your and Thad’s discussion, I must note one thing. You said:
Where are the blogs or forums talking about the impact or legacy of the Roman Empire and its institution of slavery on descendants of slaves today?
There are not many blogs about it, but there is a reason for it. And no, it’s NOT because Roman slavery didn’t have an impact to the world (because it did- the whole Roman empire had a crucial influence on much of today’s Western (and non-Western) world).
But the fact there are no people complaining about Roman slavery is that THERE IS NOBODY LEFT TO COMPLAIN. Their slaves and their victims and the people they colonized are all fully assimilated by now and they accepted Roman culture as their own and as part of their own legacy.
In other words, nobody see Roman slaves as “their people”, and many see Romans and Roman culture as their ancestors and their culture.
Similarly, if black people were fully assimilated (or if black people didn’t shape their identity the way they do), NOBODY would talk about Transatlantic slavery. (Outside obscure academic circles).
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@Mira.
Don’t think you’re interrupting anything. Its not a two-way debate between myself and Thaddeus. Anyone can join in. Such is the nature of Thaddeus’s replies it becomes this way when one begs to question his “supposedly” greater wisdom
Sorry Mira but this is just not my understanding. And in fact you have things the opposite way round. In my view!!
Not so.
If white supremacy as a globally ideological phenomenon did not continue to persist then Black people would have shaped their identity in another direction. One which would have allowed them to celebrate themselves and their achievements IN SPITE OF the traumas of the African Slave Trade.
Even if, as you say, Black people where fully assimilated they would still need to define their own identity. Otherwise white people would try to do it for them!!!
The only reason for an identity is because of non-acceptance of self. Historically, white people became “white” through their encounters and assimilations of the cultures of the indigenous peoples of this planet.
As a human race of people we are all both unique and the same. But acceptance of that sameness and uniqueness has been difficult for a significant elite of white people to swallow. Hence the lie of white supremacy
Oh…and Mira the Egyptian civilization preceeded the Roman empire yet the impact of this civilization and its impact on people, even today, can be measured far more in its influences and effects than any others you might care to mention. They too had slaves yet there are, equally, none of them left to complain!!!
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The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews
Extremely relevant to this captivating discussion.
Introduction here :
http://www.youtube.com/v/umdyu6hiEwE?version=3
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[…] "Africans sold their own people as slaves" is a stock argument White Americans use when the subject of slavery comes up. First, simply as an argument of fact it fails: Africa was not a country. Africans were not selling "their own", they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did. Africa, then as now, was made up of different countries. They were no more selling "their own" than, say, "Europeans" were killing "their own" d … Read More […]
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For an overview on the intricacies of what, say, American slavery was really like. Which is useful if you truly wish to make comparisons with “so called” African slavery. Have a look at another one of Abagond’s threads:
I previously commented on a recent film here“Goodbye Uncle Tom made by an Italian producer (without, as Thaddeus would say, an “Axe to grind” )
Scroll up two comments to find the link provided by J. – Thaddeus’s ex-nemesis!!!
Now I wonder what happened to J?
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Kwamla,
Similarly, if black people were fully assimilated (or if black people didn’t shape their identity the way they do), NOBODY would talk about Transatlantic slavery. (Outside obscure academic circles)
Not so.
If white supremacy as a globally ideological phenomenon did not continue to persist then Black people would have shaped their identity in another direction. One which would have allowed them to celebrate themselves and their achievements IN SPITE OF the traumas of the African Slave Trade.
I guess I didn’t make myself clear. I am sorry for making it look like whites have nothing to do with it. It is a two way street- THEY are the ones who invented races in the first place, and THEY are the ones who see blacks as not “one of their own”. So as long as they continue to do that, black will continue to shape their identity the way they do. (I am not saying there’s something wrong about the way black people shape their identity).
Sorry for not making this clear in my previous post- of course it has a lot to do with whites. However, whites I am talking about are the whites of today, and blacks I am talking about are blacks of today. Whatever happened in the past would not matter much, if there were nobody who would shape their identity based on that.
I am not making this up. It’s not like things like this didn’t happen.
Even if, as you say, Black people where fully assimilated they would still need to define their own identity. Otherwise white people would try to do it for them!!!
When I said “assimilated” I meant, if races didn’t exist any more. There would be no difference between whites and blacks anymore than there is difference between blue eyed and brown eyed whites today. There would be no two groups anymore.
Oh…and Mira the Egyptian civilization preceeded the Roman empire yet the impact of this civilization and its impact on people, even today, can be measured far more in its influences and effects than any others you might care to mention. They too had slaves yet there are, equally, none of them left to complain!!!
Exactly! There are no today’s people (as far as I know) who see Egyptian slaves as “their people” and their ancestors. That’s why you don’t see people making blogs about slavery in ancient Egypt (Greece, Rome…)- NOT because that slavery was “relatively ok” or “not a big deal”- but because there are NO people who consider themselves victims of said slavery.
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Correction: Jews do see themselves as victims of Egyptians, and when they were in Egypt and what happened there, and how they left and what happened after they left is an important part of their culture.
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@Kwamla
You see there is one thing you, for some reason, seem incapable of reflecting in your “intellectually rigorous” postings and that is a genuine feeling of empathy or spiritually connectedness. For you its just one more intellectual, abstract debate. Of course I am not saying it isn’t this. It is…BUT ITS MORE!!! That is for some of us its more.
Kwamla, I’m quite aware that some people have invested a lot of their personal notions of self in this debate, but such investments are a bit like love or religious belief: they exist for YOU, the subject, and you alone. Frankly, as an agnostic, I very much doubt people’s heartfelt claims of “spiritual” connection, given that they always end up to be self-serving in one way or another. But that’s an aside.
The point is, what you feel is your spiritual connection to slavery is no more an argument of what slavery actually WAS than a UFO fan’s feeling of spiritual connection to aliens the is an argument that we are in fact being visited by little green men from dimension 9.
Period.
If it makes you feel better to think you’re more “spiritually” connected to something and thus know more about it, go right ahead and rare back, man! But it’s really of no interest to me. You might as well be saying “Jeezis came down and whispered in my ear that you’re wrong”. 😀
Regarding your belief that Roman slavery was trivial, I think Mira handled that one quite well. Suffice it to say that the european enslavement of Africans was based on prior notions of servitude established under the late Roman empire and, by that fact alone if no other, Roman slavery had an immense impact on the world. But the fact of the matter is that our notions of status, religion, class and even gender are all in one way or another descended from Roman notions of free and unfree labor. As Mira points out, the fact that there are no surviving, conscious descendents of this slavery (as well as the fact that the polity which benefitted from it is long gone) means that it’s not a part of our global consciousness today.
But if we’re talking pure EFFECT ON THE WORLD (which is indeed what we’re talking about), it would be hard to argue that it’s impact was less than the transatlatntic trade.
Not that you even attempt to argue such: you simply state that it’s not and leave it there. 😀
Now, regarding white supremacy, you say…
I have to ask in the case of Rwanda. How is it possible to comprehend the genocide that took place there outside a history of the Congo; the Belgians involvement, Colonialism, White Supremacy and ultimately the African Holocaust? How many people are aware that the atrocities committed by the rule of the former Belgian colonial masters far exceeded anything the Rwandan peoples perpetrated on themselves?
No doubt, and yet the effect of that is very ambiguous. First of all, the Belgians raised up the Tutsi. Then, as independence came by, they raised up the Hutu. What they did, according to most African writeres I’ve read on the topic, was infect Rwanda with the notion of ethnic identity and insured that the Hutus would hate the Tutsi and then they gave power to the Hutu.
What’s interesting in all this, however, is that the last bit – giving power to the Hutu – was seen at the time as “compensation” and “resolution” of Belgium’s early sins.
So my point here is that your empassioned pleas for “resolution of the legacy of slavery and colonialism” have indeed been heard and many European powers have tried to implement such a policy. Generally, it has made things WORSE and, in almost all cases, it has done so because the people implementing the policy couldn’t get beyond the dichotic black/white view of Africa as an innocent, historyless continent where all that is bad came from abroad.
The same view you seem to be espousing, Kwamla.
So you’re RIGHT, Kwamla: it is the indoctrination of white supremacy that causes this view. Unfortunately, it seems to be deeply rooted in pretty much everybody by now, to the point where you think your “spiritual” connection to Africa is leading yopu to call for something different than what the European colonial powers claim to be doing.
So what it comes down to, Kwamla, is you presume that somehow you are “disentangled” from the knots and webs of white supremacist thought, even as you (re)articulate the myths of Africa as a dark continent (i.e. a place with no history), Africans as not truly human (i.e. as peoples who are incapable of the full range of expression of human history) and Africa, ultimately, as a “country” and not the collection of diverse, fractious peoples it always has been.
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Here’s an example of the “Africa is a country” stereotype, by the way, one which has been nurtured by white supremacy and one in which kwamla apparently believes:
If white supremacy as a globally ideological phenomenon did not continue to persist then Black people would have shaped their identity in another direction. One which would have allowed them to celebrate themselves and their achievements IN SPITE OF the traumas of the African Slave Trade.
“Black people” were invented by white racism. They don’t have a destiny (any more than “white” people do) and, even if they did, it wouldn’t be singular. Africa’s inhabitants do not now and never have considered themselves to be a singular people.
Secondly, the peoples of Africa have been very successful in celebrating themselves and their achievments IN SPITE OF the traumas of the slave trade, colonialism and racism.
If Europe hadn’t burst into capitalism and industrialism, some other set of peoples probably would have invented something very similar. If it had been the Africans, that experience would have changed them as readically and irrevocably (or not) as the Expansion changed the Europeans. Africa is a human part of the human world and in human history, change is inevitable. And it just so happens that, so far in human history, change has been accompanied by war, slavery and injustice of all sorts. Africa would not have escaped this if Europe didn’t exist. the best one could have hoped for (as long as we’re presuming that history could be changed) was a world in which Africa became the dominant continent during the expansion period. But I HIGHLY doubt such a world would be any better than the one we live in because human beings – and especially human collectivities – are jerks.
but it’s very easy to argue that something that never happened would have made the world better, kwamla. What you forget is that, logically speaking, there’s as likely a chance that it would have made the world WORSE.
But acceptance of that sameness and uniqueness has been difficult for a significant elite of white people to swallow. Hence the lie of white supremacy.
But the Hutu seem to have that same problem. In fact, race and ethnicity-based genocide is occuring and has occurred all over the planet. This is not due to white supremacy. The Hutu, in fact, are prejuduced against the Tutsi in part because of the “Hamitic myth”, set by early white explorers, that they Tutsi were “superior” to the Hutu for being “more white”. Hard to say, then, that the Hutu are killing Tutsi because they believe in white supremacy.
Now I wonder what happened to J?
Given the people he claims are his “afrocentric” heroes, I’d say he’s probably busy reading the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” these days. That seemed to be where he was headed, intellectually speaking.
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@Mira.
I would have thought from my readings of many of your posts here that you might be more emotionally aware of an aspect of African slavery which made it unique amongst all other forms.
That aspect was the premeditated stripping of culture, identity, family and kinship from all African slaves. Its this legacy aspect of African slavery which is responsible for Black people (or those in the diaspora) desiring to research their links to a past prior to slavery. This is an effort to reclaim and re-associate with a history which was willfully and purposely denied and taken away from them.
Please correct me if I am wrong but this one particular aspect was only peculiar to the type of slavery perpetrated on African peoples. This, historically was never a part of Roman, Greek, Egyptian, you name it. Even so called African slavery.
It makes a non-sense to talk in terms of all forms of slavery in “general terms” (as Thaddeus would have us do) and lump African slavery in there. Just as it would be to compare the exterminations perpetrated on the Jews during Nazi Germany – the Jewish holocaust with say, the genocide in Rwanda or genocides of any groups of people in general. To do so would be to downplay or obscure the pernicious quality of this particular from of genocide.
Now this may not have been your intention to convey this in your postings but in discussing such issues as African slavery in a “generalized” way comparing it with other forms you open yourself up to accusations of not caring or unintentionally racist.
Of course if you don’t care about such things then it needn’t matter. However, I suspect you might.
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That aspect was the premeditated stripping of culture, identity, family and kinship from all African slaves.
Sorry, this has occurred in other forms of slavery too, both in Europe and Africa.
“Stripping of culture, family and kinship”? When you’re captured and living among another people, that is precisely what happens to you. African female slaves, “married” into the families of their captors for reproductive purposes, where not preserving “their” family and kinship structures. That was, in fact, the entire point of such marriages, which you seem to think were basically in the mold of 21st century American monogamic love matches, Kwamla.
Captivity and removal to a neighboring nation also put one out of one’s culture and kinship circles. The only POSSIBLE way you could feel that this wasn’t the case would be if you believed in the “Africa is a nation” fallacy, where all Africans supposedly have the same culture.
In Roman slavery, again, one was removed from one’s original culture. Briton slaves in Rome were not living in anything like ttheir original culture because – and get this, Kwamla – COLOR OF SKIN DOES NOT EQUAL CULTURE. Furthermore, their kinship groups and families were also not perserved.
Every genocide and every form of slavery has its pernicious and particular qualities. My point from the beginning has been that it is morally unacceptable to believe that one or another form of these things was “morally superior”.
I find it ironic as hell that at least four people, above, are arguing precisely this. So while Abagond feels his point has been proven by my bringing up the historical record of African slavery, I can say that mine has DEFINITELY been proven.
In general, neither blacks nor whites want to look at the REAL historical record. Both groups have their feel-good myths to maintain slavery as far away from their particular legacy myths as possible. Given this, I don’t see what Abagond describes as a particularly “white” problem, not when you have people like Vicky and Kwamla holding up the enslavement and rape of African women as a “kinder, gentler” form of slavery because it’s supposedly a “marriage” (as if that term, in this context, had anything to do with marriage in the way they conceive of it today).
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Just saw a documentary couple days ago, forgot which it was, but in it one researcher stated this:
At its peak the Atlantic slave trade got some 13 million slaves involved. There are 27 million slaves in the world today.
I have no idea is it so. This guy clearly believed it and so did the program. Something about UN statistics if I remember correctly.
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Kwamla,
I wasn’t speaking about slavery in generalized terms (in a way I wanted to make all forms of slavery “the same”). I was just pointing out that, no matter what really happened (be it slavery, genocide, war or any other horror), it doesn’t really matter (in historical sense) if there’s nobody to remember it, or to shape their identity on it. It is a harsh reality, but it’s how it is.
(History is written by the winners, remember?)
What I’m saying is, the fact nobody remembers something or writes about it (outside academic circles) doesn’t matter it wasn’t horrible or that it didn’t happen.
As for stripping of culture and identity, yes, of course it happened in the past- many, many times. In fact, you could say that the whole “white (western) culture” is a product of it- people who were not Romans adopted their culture and were assimilated so much they completely erased their previous identity and they adopted the culture of their oppressors. The whole western culture is a product of assimilation, if you want to look at it.
I am not writing this as a proof that other forms of slavery (Roman, for example) was worse than Transatlantic slavery or that all slavery is the same. All I’m saying is that stuff you wrote (other forms of slavery not having an impact, other forms of slavery didn’t strip people of culture and identity) isn’t true: it was quite the contrary. The fact it doesn’t look like that from our POV is precisely because it worked 100%: nobody see themselves as victims of ancient slavery today, nobody cares, and nobody shapes their identity on it. People are completely and fully assimilated.
There is also an important dimension here: time. Stuff that happened a long time ago concern people of today less than what happened in the near past. Transatlantic slavery happened only a few centuries ago. Egyptian, Greek and Roman slavery were thousands (and couple of thousands) years before. Let’s see what would people think about transatlantic slavery in 1000 years from now. (Especially
ifwhen US (a country that shapes its identity on white/black dichotomy) is not powerful anymore.And there’s more. Modern world (especially western) is still really proud of things like progress, human rights and rationality. They (and most of the people, actually) often believe modern time is in some ways “better” or “more humane” than the past- or at least that it SHOULD be (we’re not in prehistory anymore!) In this sense, any atrocities happening before, say, XVI or XVII or XVIII century are seen as expectable- that was what people back then were like. But not us, not today!
This is particularly true for XX century, which was pretty violent. But the violence in XX century (say, Hitler and WW II) is seen as the most horrible thing that ever happened in the world not just because of what happened, but also because people, for some reason, think that people in the XX century should know better and that they are not beasts they were back in, say, Ancient Mesopotamia or Middle Ages. Wrong. People are still violent. We are not any better than people in prehistory, or ancient Egypt, or Middle Ages (and sometimes we might be worse, because our technology can hurt more people).
I do think any slavery, occupation, war, etc. should be viewed from its specific historical point of view, since none of these things happen spontaneously, and no two are the same. But to actually compare specific atrocities is, I think, disrespectful for the victims (how to judge, for example, what was more horrible: lynching or impaling?) It’s offending and makes no sense.
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On another thread Abagond wrote:
Having gone through analyzing most of Thaddeus’s posts and comments in this thread:
(“Africans sold their own people as slaves” is a stock argument White Americans use when the subject of slavery comes up. )
I believe this is equally applicable here!!!
For example:
“…Kwamla holding up the enslavement and rape of African women as a “kinder, gentler” form of slavery because it’s supposedly a “marriage..”
Of course. This came from me too didn’t it Thaddeus?
Lets look at another but different type of example:
On the subject of “so called African slavery” I believe Wikipiedia, though not the most authoritative source. But certainly as a general guide to what this entailed is slightly more informative than what Thaddeus has had to say on so far on this subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_slave_trade
Now, I personally believe that it is morally unacceptable to believe that the African Transatlantic Slave trade should be minimalised and placed in the context of all other forms of slavery and genocide. This is what Thaddeus is arguing (as is his privilege) in his statement.
In the same way I would say it is morally unacceptable to place the Jewish Holocaust in the context of all other forms of genocides. History tells us for some reason this particular form of genocide stands out amongst all others.
Hmmm….I wonder if Thaddeus would be prepared to make the same argument about the Jewish Holocaust?
Anyway, I for one have grown tired of Professor Thaddeus’s ill-judged views and opinions on Slavery. To this end I would like to offer the view of more “empathetic” Professor:
http://www.elombah.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3264:the-rape-of-africa&catid=30:the-economy&Itemid=41
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@Mira
At its peak the Atlantic slave trade got some 13 million slaves involved. There are 27 million slaves in the world today.
I have no idea is it so. This guy clearly believed it and so did the program. Something about UN statistics if I remember correctly.
The UN is the first organization to admit that we have no idea at all how many slaves are in the world today. It’s component organizations have made radically differening estimates at different times, ranging from 2 million to upwards of 100 million.
There is, obviously, no way to even give a good ball-park estimate on this thing, but that doesn’t stop NGOs and the media from selecting whatever “out-of-your-ass” stat they like and blowing it to the four winds in order to ramp a sense of global panic up or down, as they see fit.
I highly doubt that there are 27 million slaves, unless we use a very, very wide and ahistoric definition of slavery.
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Thad,
Sam was the one who mentioned 27 millions of slaves.
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@Kwamla
“…Kwamla holding up the enslavement and rape of African women as a “kinder, gentler” form of slavery because it’s supposedly a “marriage..”
Of course. This came from me too didn’t it Thaddeus?
A reasonable presumption, given your claim that African slavery didn’t “strip family” from the slaves.
I mean, what kind of “family” are we talking about here, Kwamla? It could only be the “family” created by forced marriages in order to produce non-kinship-lnked heirs.
Or were you thinking of another family when you made that claim?
In the same way I would say it is morally unacceptable to place the Jewish Holocaust in the context of all other forms of genocides. History tells us for some reason this particular form of genocide stands out amongst all others.
No, history does not necessarily tell us that, but plenty of Jewish ethnoactivists have. Talk to gypsy ethno-activists or native american ethno-activists and you’ll quickly get another perspective on genocide, Kwamla. History isn’t a question of painting black hats and white hats on the actors and then going along with whatever your self-chosen “good guys” have to say on a topic.
Now, I personally believe that it is morally unacceptable to believe that the African Transatlantic Slave trade should be minimalised and placed in the context of all other forms of slavery and genocide. This is what Thaddeus is arguing (as is his privilege) in his statement.
And I personally believe that other forms of slavery – or genocide, for that matter – shouldn’t be minimalized by conviently down-playing their inhuman aspects in order to make a political point regarding one particular form of slavery or genocide.
You’ve mentioned several times that this is an emotional and political issue for you, Kwamla, and I can accept that, But other forms of slavery were just as much an emotional and political issue to the people involved in them. Why the hell should I believe that your emotions and politics are so much more sacred than anyone else’s?
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director, International Center for Writing and Translation, University of California, Irvine.
…and what would one expect out of a lit professor OTHER than flowery rhetoric? Certainly not history.
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Yes, I just brought it up (27) since I saw that documentary. I think it was brittish one.
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The BBC has recently gone on frothing s*** fit about slavery and is pulling all sorts of numbers straight out of their a$$. they did a recent piece on Brazil, for example, where they claim that there are over 250,000 child prostitutes in the country. That piece of questionable data came from the UN, who quoted a Brazilian official in the Justice Ministry who – apparently – pulled the number straight out of his bunghole.
The problem with the media on things like this is that they don’t need to ask themselves “Is this true?”, they simply need to ask “Has an authority said it?” And there are so many people tossing around completely made up n umbers regarding modern slavery that an editor can pretty much pick and choose the tone he wants and run with the numbers that support it.
Panic sells. If it bleeds, it leads. And nothing panics human beings more than imagined threates to mothers and children. It’s not a coincidence, then, that “sexual slavery” and “child sexual exploitation” turns up so often in these reports: it’s the most panicking thing the western media can think of.
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What a lie! My ancestor was a black soudano-ethiopian like the dinka, and he was liberate in 1798, by french army in Egypt before castration, hundreds of millions of christians and amonists black have been slaughtered and enslaved by black muslims, and black king, like in Benin.
You, black americans, act as if a son of resistant against nazisme would say : HITLER was right, cause he’s white as i am, nonsense!
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I’m curious…what should a white person say? What would make it right? I’m not making any excuses. What happened in this country with regard to slavery was horrible and inhumane. I also recognize that it took another 100 years after the imancipation proclamation for black people in our country to demand equality through the civil rights movement. Then, it took another generation for true racial equality to sink in. However, I am a Generation X-er, who was fortunate enough to grow up in a time that Martin Luther King, Jr, could only dream of–a time when you judge a person by what is in their heart not the color of their skin. I never grew up around racial prejudice and have friends of every race and religion. In conclusion, I recognize what happened in this country with regard to slavery and make no excuses about it. However, I don’t subscribe to white guilt either. I think it is time for us to stop blaming others for “sins of our ancestors” and look to the future. We all choose our own destines–let’s choose to be happy and live in peace!
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I think Hdr is over simplifying things.
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This blog is nothing but hatred. That hatred will burn you up inside. Try to do good and not promote hate.
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How CAres imean reallycoe on
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i am glad for this post. for i for one believe that history books are full of lies and when you really think about something it would make more sense than some of these books. divide and concour was the mission so its not everything people say i believe, now this post is more logical. i often here alot of people say african sold their people into slavery. when most of the african slaves was from the west. africa is a continent. they put more emphasis on the african that sold slaves to take the weight off the robbery. christopher columbus didn’t discover america, west indies etc. you can’t discover whats already there. he just did research.
think logical
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@hdr
@john in philly
i don’t think these post is to promote hatred. i think its to promote understanding of a certain kind of mind set that exist today in america and throughout the world. i could only speak of america because thats where i live. you have to face your fears in life. as a black person your born into this world and your taught that you are a second class citizen, your everything thats bad. wouldn’t you want to know why?
well its not so much about you as a individual. its more about changeing the mind set, so you have to throw it out there. you may get one person attention, but thats a start. it may sound harsh but it is reality, and who feels it knows it. we don’t want to pass on brainwash education to our children or want them to feel inferior. and some of us is trying to deal with the issues within ourself, that we know history has distributed. we have seen the outcome of the uneducated. so we are trying to get educated. the biggest lesson in life for a person is to understand yourself.
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All I here is whites and blacks.Not English or portugese or Africans.As long as we put skin color as the enemy behind the slave trade,we are catigorizing all white people as the enemy.The portugese were the first to bring slavery to north America,and their skin is brown.How will I ever connect with my black brother and sister,when i am judged by the white color of my skin.I don”t ever want African Americans to forget what the pain of slavery brought to them. At what cost will hating and blaming all white people solve? I look forward to the day that I can look at another human being,and not feel that I am being judged by the color of my skin.For I am you ,and you are me.
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I don’t get comments like the one above. Who started it is not important. It has decimated regions and its brought wealth to others, America being one of them. But America’s wealth in terms of skin color (since you’re so into that) has been and is still lopsided. I highly doubt you want to be reminded of all the dirty, ugly things that made that possible. How do I know that? Out of everything this thread had to offer, you got stuck on feelings of “all white people are being categorized as the enemy” and that people are “blaming and hating all white people”. If that indicates anything about the way you perceive your country and your skin, then I’m not surprised you’re not “connecting” with your countrymen.
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I think it’s sick that black people don’t care about the Arab slave trade. Abagond, you are a racist who often spews hatred like ” Whiteyz da debill”. how can whitey be da debill if other races have committed atrocities too? Why don’t you look up the Arab slave trade and what is still going on underground with some Arab nations? You won’t, and other blacks won’t because your too afraid to admit that “whitey isn’t da debbill”, and without us, you will be enslaved on a large scale once more, because we aren’t the only ones who hate you. You’d like to think that we caused all your problems, and without us they’d go away; Guess what? We weren’t the first to enslave you, and weren’t the first to destroy or take advantage of you. Why would you say it’s important to learn about history, then contradict yourself by telling us the Arab slave trade wasnt important. Other people, besides whites have committed horrible crimes against you. No little lie of yours can ever change that. Unless you learn about slavery in all forms, not just the Atlantic slave trade, you are definitely doomed to repeat it.
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@ Angie
For white people to say African Americans don’t care about the Arab Slave Trade is just another typical and dishonest derailment tactic of theirs. All to mitigate the bad feelings they have over something that has put a stain on that false image of perfection that white people have dishonestly crafted for themselves. An image that white people still try to keep up, when they never talk about the bad things they have done and STILL DO.
Why would African Americans point out what the Arabs in the Middle East did? That has absolutely nothing to do with what white Euro slavers did TO Africans in North America. It’s also funny how the majority of Arabs are always scientifically labeled and claimed as “white” by white scientists, until someone brings up terrorists, and the slave trade. Then they’re back to being plain ol’ Arabs. Like that’s a race, and they’ve suddenly been kicked out of “the white club”.
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@ Angie:
where on this blog has Abagond said that white people are the devil? I’d be eager to know.
Btw, I wonder if you appreciate the irony in your sentence:
Abagond, you are a racist who often spews hatred like ” Whiteyz da debill”.
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@ Eurasian Sensation
Hahaha… nice irony catch.
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@Bulanikgirl
“Da debill” is just one example of the both mocking and hilariously knee-jerking responses white people use, when they refer to the way black people speak. But in an obviously exaggerated fashion. In conversations about the known atrocities of whites, it’s almost always followed up with a derailment or a flatout dismissal.
I have noticed that there are a few other mocking terms used by deflective and knee-jerking white posters, which you should look out for. For example “Da Ebil Whyte”, which is used sarcastically when white people want to turn into apologists for white racism, and begin their “There is no racism! It’s all in your head!” nonsense. I’ve seen this line used a lot on conservative blogs, when blatant Republican bigotry is pointed out.
There is also the lesser known “Muh Dik”, when white people (of the young adult age group) try to characterize oversexed, crotch grabbing, slang speaking, black thugs who “viciously prey on” (date) white women. They usually throw this in randomly with numerous “Yo’s” and “Dawg’s”, and then dishonestly equate them with your average black male, by heavily impling without blatantly saying. A “Catch Me If You Can!” tactic that racist white people constantly use nowadays, and swear they are being clever with.
…despite the fact that it keeps getting called out…
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Franklin wrote: A “Catch Me If You Can!” tactic that racist white people constantly use nowadays, and swear they are being clever with.
It’s also a form of passive-agressive behavior, also known as punk-assery.
I was reading the commentary of one really racist …oops…I mean, uh, “race realist” blog and there were several commenters (whom I can only assume were pre-pubescent boys) entertaining themselves with guffaw-inducing phrases as “word to your mama”. Now, I’ve been Black for a while now and I’ve never known anyone except for the children on that blog…and maybe a character in a bad “blaxploitation” film from the 70s.
I must admit, though, the person upthread with the “Whiteyz da debill” numbskullery had me laughing until tears rolled down my cheeks!
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Edit: It’s also a form of passive-aggressive behavior, also known as punk-assery.
I was reading the commentary of one really racist…oops…I mean, uh, “race realist” blog and there were several commenters (whom I can only assume were pre-pubescent boys) entertaining themselves with the guffaw-inducing phrase, “word to your mama”. Now, I’ve been Black for a while, and I’ve never known anyone, except for the children on that blog, and maybe a character in a bad “blaxploitation” film from the 70s, to actually make use of the phrase “word to your mama”….
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You won’t, and other blacks won’t because your too afraid to admit that “whitey isn’t da debbill”, and without us, you will be enslaved on a large scale once more, because we aren’t the only ones who hate you.</em.
If they ever enslave people on a large scale again, I hope it is you and your ilk as I detest washing windows and doing yard work. Will you quite it with the white minstrel act? The only people I have ever heard talking like that are tools like you and old Stepin Fetchit movies.
We weren’t the first to enslave you, and weren’t the first to destroy or take advantage of you.
Finally, a white person who admits to their ancestors, and by extension themselves, culpability in regards to slavery, albeit in a roundabout racist way!
Unless you learn about slavery in all forms, not just the Atlantic slave trade, you are definitely doomed to repeat it.
Not if ‘de debill’ don’t get them first!
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Reading this reminds me of another of my own anecdotal experiences.
I was traveling in Italy. I arrived in Rome and was looking for my hotel, an internet deal I found in the couture district. Here I was standing on the sidewalk looking for the address when along comes what appeared to be a visiting west African dignitary (a first, second or third lady perhaps?) and her entourage of about a dozen bodyguards, a few of whom were white. Engrossed in my map, I didn’t even notice them until they were right on top of me. What happened next was permanently seared in my mind. One of the white bodyguards got my attention and gestured for me to move from the sidewalk into the gutter until they passed. There was no need for it: it was one of the wider main streets in Rome and there was room for them to pass even walking 3 abreast as they were, as I was already off to the side trying to be discreet about needing a map.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accurately express the visceral, primal rage that rose in me at that instant.
As I saw it, an African leader is on a shopping spree in Rome while her country probably doesn’t even have widespread access to clean water, and has a white bodyguard direct me into the gutter. Indeed I’m a black American, with all that it entails, because of people like her. It was one of the most deeply offensive experiences I’ve ever had. I couldn’t help thinking that in reality she should be begging my forgiveness and cutting ME a check instead of Gucci.
All that must have shown on my face, because a distinctly apologetic look crossed white bodyguard’s face and he backed off; he didn’t force me into the gutter (which is exactly what he would have had to do because NO WAY was I going for that BS), but rather positioned himself between us as the entourage passed instead. As if.
This isn’t to suggest she owes me anything. But as I saw and felt it, things like that only widen the chasm.
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Nice Try.
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This blog is a joke. The posters, for the most part, are emotionally charged anti-intellectual jackasses. This guy, Thadeus, is the only person I see using any basic common sense and reason. That usually happens when you are vastly more educated on a subject than those you are dealing with. He’s not saying anything racist or egotistical. He’s just stating facts. I stumbled across this because I wanted to find info on what exact group of Africans captured and sold slaves to other Africans and Europeans and English colonists and then Americans. Seems none of you know, though. Isn’t that important? Abagong said they weren’t Africans or something.
Here’s the quote:
Africa was not a country. Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did. Africa, then as now, was made up of different countries. They were no more selling “their own” than, say, “Europeans” were killing “their own” during the Holocaust.
Really? How should the question be phrased? “What group of peoples living or working on the continent now known as Africa during the era of the slave trade, profited from the selling of peoples captured on said continent?” Is that what it takes?
Okay, what group of enemies did the majority of the collecting and selling? Just answer the question. What countries participated? See, we know who was responsible for the holocaust. Seriously, a 6th grade debater would destroy you.
This blog reads like a Chris Rock(greatest stand up of all-time, btw) Nat X bit. Except you actually believe it. lol!
The whole “why don’t whites face up to it?” is just offensive and a really stupid position. The list of defences(I’m assuming you aren’t American or you would have spelled it the way we do) is ridiculous. The “he did it, too” analogy is ludicrous. If a murderer says another person murdered and he has proof, do you not want to know who else is murdering? It’s a very legitimate argument and is apparently one that none of you are willing to emotionally deal with.
I’m guessing not many of your mothers picked cotton in Alabama till her hands bled. Mine did.
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Remember, those that are trying to give you the most are the ones that are trying to help you the least. Vote conservative, otherwise, you will be voting for those that think they are better than you. Check Yourself.
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The African slave trade was based on tribalism but the prejudice towards the slaves can be equated to racism. For instance, the dominant tribe viewed the captive slaves as sub human, therefore they had no qualms about selling them like property.
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Provide proof of that paragraph John. Something that proves this to be true for at least 51% of African tribes. I’ll wait. It seems like too many apologists these days confuse their own “white wishful thinking” with “facts”.
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I agree with Franklin: what you are saying sounds for all the world like a projection of white Anglo thought onto Africans.
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African-Americans are trying to do the same thing.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/02/news/economy/black_unemployment_rate/
Keep supporting the Liberal Left “White Man” and you will keep devaluing your economic worth.
But I guess most of your are screaming; racism, unequal opportunity, we need more assistance to even the playing field.
That’s exactly what they want you to scream.
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@ Jallen
And support whom instead? White Conservatives that are consistently against labor unions, public education, and the rest of the US work force? Or White Independents/Libertarians that are for racial descrimination when it comes to businesses in general? It seems as if you don’t thinking things through.
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Africans sold their own people as slaves.
Africans are still selling slaves.
Arab traders sold slaves too.
Slavery goes back thousands of years.
All races have practised slavery.
Whites stopped slavery.
My family never owned slaves.
That was Ancient History.
You are living in the past.
Get over it!
It was the times.
Slavery did not make economic sense.
Whites got to where they are by their own hard work
Blacks are better off in America than in Africa
Africans were savages.
Which one of these statements isn’t true? look you will never find equality playing the blame game its racist and stereotypical to blame all white people for slavery just like it is blaming all black people for gang violence this article is full of blame and hate and isn’t getting you anywhere in life i believe in unity and equality no one man is better than another man unless that other man makes himself less of a man no matter what sex race or religion that means blaming another man for something he didn’t do or judging them strickly on their sex race or religion instead of judging him by his own actions is wrong and ignorant GET OVER IT move on start working on making the world a better place instead of pointing out the faults and bitching about them
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I love it when people like Joe Pierson make themselves out to be perfect examples.
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@ Joe Pierson
I hope you don’t mind me “bitching” about your severe lack of PERIODS. But I guess this means I’m pointing out YOUR faults instead of making the world a better place, huh?? And how do you know blaming you for stuff isn’t getting me anywhere in life? Looking at your writing is certainly intensifying my ambition to go where people like you are – to TEACH punctuation.
And what’s this suppose to mean?
Wow..Now I’m really feeling ambitious!! 🙂
Do come by again.
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Matari,
I noticed that too. It was one huge run-on sentence with no periods even at the end lol.
Joe,
Your statements are seen as typical responses coming from a troll with nothing to offer the conversation. You’ve proved the point of this and several other blog entries that talk about the usual comments white people say over and over again like zombies with a “hive” mind like the Borg from Star Trek. This is why you are mocked, and this is why trolls are laughed at and hated. Consider this a lesson for you.
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Your site is racist bunching “whites” into one group. It wasn’t whites who had slaves but all kinds of people and there were groups enslaved longer than blacks,someone bringing up the obvious you call racist if ift doesn’t propogate your racism. Get over it,there are more slaves alive now than ever, 27 million but you don’t care about slavery,you just care about black, your the racist one by picking only parts of history to display,and calling others racist if they mention other pieces of the puzzle. Blacks aren’t the only ones by far who suffered slavery but just whined the loudest. Blacks sold blacks,they fought each other,etc. So don’t act like blacks were these innocent people hugging each other. Native americans and irish were slaves in the US before black go sell crazy to someone else,you don’t care about facts just your hate,which is wrong anyway, not mad at the spanish who were in the slave trade? Or the africans who were in the slave trade? No just whites,lol,ok. Typical though.
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“you don’t care about facts just your hate,which is wrong anyway,”
Speak for yourself, troll. Incidentally, you might want to learn proper grammar and spelling before posting on adult blogs, m’kay?
It also helps if you attempt to use a REAL argument, not rehashing tired old tripe that your grandpappy still spews from his Barco-Lounger. As far as ‘bunching people into one group’ – if you can’t refrain from doing so, then why do you expect others to? Smells of hypocrisy, to me…
Now, go chase a few parked cars! Your ilk is good at that – stick to it. You might succeed one day. 😎
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@Jason
Blacks aren’t the only ones by far who suffered slavery but just whined the loudest
Round of applause for you mate, really representing for white folk here arent you…!
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@ Jason
If you talked about raping my daughter the same way, here is what you would sound like:
Why are you picking on me? I am not the only person who raped anyone. Get over it, women get raped every day but you don’t care about rape, you just care about your daughter. She is not the only one who has been raped. My cousin’s sister-in-law was raped. Your daughter is just a whiner. And she is not the nicest person, you know. How come you are not angry at other rapists? You don’t care about facts, just your hatred for me. Typical though.
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get over urself, dude. U need 2 get a life. we used them for our on selfish reasons. ya im white. what we did was wrong so get over thinking that whites r innocent and perfect little angels because WERE NOT!!!!
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See what I don’t understand is why as a group of people, it is acknowledged that whites instigated slavery in this country, a lot owned slaves, treated them horribly and yet when it is acknowledged and even apologized for, Af. Am will NOT accept that. It’s not enough. Unless every single “white person” ( I am a huge mix of many races, though I look mostly white) gets down on their knees and subjugates themselves to you, it just won’t be enough! Don’t you get it? It is HISTORY! History is a story of the PAST. It is there so we don’t EVER REPEAT OUR MISTAKES. But that’s just not enough for most black people and they keep on and on and ON with the same thing. I know some dark skin black people who are racist to lighter skin black people….what’s up with that? Is black not black enough? Is the fact that my great-great had a tiny drop of black blood to the point that you never see it in me and you will never see it in my blond-haired blue-eyed son, enough for you to hate me and persecute me and try to make me “understand” that I OWE you something? When I owe you NOTHING beyond common curtesy and respect that I would show for any person? It just all sickens me.
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@ Mom2MZJM
Talk is cheap.If whites are serious they would pay reparations: all that back pay plus interest divided among everyone over 18 who marked their race as black on the US Census in 2010. That simple.
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For all the people who want to say whites were slaves too and blah blah had it just as bad. Muslims did take white slaves yes, but in the muslim world slaves were a pretty proud class the muslim mamluks were slaves and eventually ruled egypt. Also the Turkish Jannisaries were mostly slaves yes but they were very educated and great warriors. Slaves in muslims countries were usually educated and got as far as sultan ruler of the kingdom.
Also another thing about slavery in the west is they believed blacks and non whites didnt have souls but where animals like monkeys and what not, you can even look it up scientist taught this in the 1700-1800s. So they thought slavery was ok about this, true other people did have slavery but not with this mentality. I believe in africa slavery was like a life debt like the wookies off starwars. In the muslim world slaves were usually turned into great warriors.
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@ abagond
You think blacks should get reparations for slavery from 100 years ago the country is in debt. Also it wouldnt be fair im not black but ive been treated a lot worst than blacks by white. Theyd attack me, make fun of me everyday, never let me advance in the workplace, basically ruined my life, because they hated blacks but like always most whites are scared of blacks so they attack less intimidating non blacks. If anything I would deserve a reparations more than most blacks. To say one race deserves reparations is not fair at all.
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mistake i meant 100s years ago not a 100 years ago yes i know when slavery was ended. lol
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@Raphael Green
Slavery never ended it just evolved.
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@MOM2MZJM
Think about a family listening to the life experiences of their grandparents and feeling pride about their accomplishments…now think of all the families that fought for recognition, honor, Medal and back pay for compensation for soldiers that went unrecognized. Now think of the families that listened to the horrible accounts of rape, beatings, hanging, mutilation, and treatment like they were not humans with any rights to own land or even live. Sure many were given land…but many had it taken away shortly after and it was given back to the white plantation owners. Those apologies are empty because they are allowing the oppression to continue.
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What is to be gained by grouping whites together as a race and demonizing them for horrific sins of a fraction of other whites? Whites often get on the defense because a white person today had absolutely nothing to do with those atrocities. Its as if whites must apologize for being white, and for the sins of people they never knew…and probably would dislike very much: powerful, cruel, individuals who treated other human beings like animals.
The underlying implication is that whites somehow have a genetic ‘hate’ defect that is not present in blacks. So, while blacks today came from ancestors that were horribly mistreated generations ago, some choose to bring it up in ways that are offensive and accusatory.
Blacks hold the power on diffusing this issue and strengthening the bond between blacks and whites. Whites are powerless.
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@Craig
I think youre misunderstanding most black people from what ive noticed dont think modern whites should be punished for things in the past but for things they still do. Also theyre more mad the fact you WILL NOT admit the reason why a lot of blacks are the way they are is because of the past. Its like most white people are unable to lack empathy for anyone else and they just say you have no one to blame but themselves. Or if the past is ever brought up they just say so what its in the past like they dont even care. Its that kind of mentality that makes black people complain about the past when most whites refuse to even say it was wrong for what happened to the past changing the subject instead saying oh well its not my fault its its in the past who cares. I noticed most white people enjoy playing the victim and use reverse racism sort of like you are no offense.
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All whites are not decendents from Europe.. Blacks are not the minority anymore, the Spanish are..american Indians should be the ones that are pissed they are the ones who had to deal with all of us freaks lol.. I personally don’t take responsibility for what others do no matter what color they are! I don’t care what people say I hate everyone equally lol.. Seriously there is going to be a lot of pissed off racist white folks when they get to heaven ..( if they make it with hate in their heart) you know Jesus was a Jew the racist whites think he’s white and every race thinks that he is one of them.. Lmao!! He’s was a Jew folks your savior was Jewish so get over yourselves!! I did not exist during the civil rights movement or b4 so i have no idea why I should be (anyone else for that matter ) punished or categorized with a certain race instead of who I am in Christ! Can you guess what race I am? I doubt it!!
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@Raphael Green
Actually slavery for the white people in africa via the muslims etc…..was nearly as equally brutal as it was for the black people in the US.
Most of them died from mistreatment and brutal working conditions.
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@V-4
Thats why you have so many great circassian and slavic mamluks in egypt. Also having great slave muslim warriors in the ottoman empire. I dont doubt it was bad for whites sometimes but most muslims educated their slaves and what not that was usually not done for black slaves in america. There was a time where being a slave warrior in muslim society was something great.
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@Raphael
There’s been some level of immigration there and back for awhile now, also yes at least a few did manage to reproduce before they died.
And no; it wasn’t as bad as the US-slavery system but it was still a horrificuly brutal system all on its own.
Most whites weren’t slave warriors, they were just good ol’ fashioned slaves.
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For me, the problem comes if white people in the Americas cant look at the reality of the past about bringing slaves from Africa , in huge numbers, and they become in denial about the absolute truth of how , because of that, our American societies still have discrimination , class issues, racist issues etc
I just read in the New York Times , again , yesterday, over and over every year, how unemployment is greater for blacks and hispanics than for whites. If its not unemployment, its a report about school systems in black neighborhoods are worse than white neighborhood schools , or some other report to prove that the traces of the repercusions of bringing black slaves en masse from Africa are still in serious effect in all the places that brought slaves from Africa in the Americas (certainly down in Brazil where I live , as well as the USA).
These things keep playing out in all the Americas where they brought black African slaves.
If we can look at those truths, then, and only then can we look at the fact that slavery was practiced in many cultures and the Arabs traded more black African slaves than anyone and the more powerful tribes in Africa were conquering other tribes to feed this slave trade .
I find the information on the black slave trade by the Arabs to be extremly limited and hard to find…I dont think it has been documented and examined as much as the European slave trade
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BR
“If we can look at those truths, then, and only then can we look at…
You’re going to tell someone when they can and can’t look at now? Oh, I get it. You only want to talk about the things that support your POV and ignore everything that doesn’t.
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Cmon, Duckgoofs, these arnt the Commandments set in stone, its an opinion
What is funny to me is that , you dont seem to be able to address these issues
I have never seen you acknowledge about the affects of bringing huge numbers of African slaves over to the Americas, and the repercusions from that , that our societies in the Americas are suffering from
Are you in denial about that ? Can you speak to these issues at all?
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BR
I have never seen you acknowledge about the affects of bringing huge numbers of African slaves over to the Americas, and the repercusions from that , that our societies in the Americas are suffering from
That’s a good point. America is definitely suffering from the repercussions of large numbers of Africans.
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That’s a good point. America is definitely suffering from the repercussions of large numbers of Africans.
“””””
@ duckduckgoofs,
Which is so entirely eclipsed by the suffering it has faced by the presence of the first white man and his swathes of flea bitten, disease ridden, conquistadores.
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JT
I seem to recall a comment by you on another thread in which you said you despised those who hated their own race. And your last comment really does suggest that. IMO, you’re a radical and quite honestly batsh!t crazy. I can nearly imagine you foaming at the mouth as you banged out that last comment.
But more to the point, the US has among the lowest infant mortality, highest longevity and highest standard of living of anywhere in the world. Clearly, every one alive today has benefited enormously from the presence of whites whether they have the integrity to admit it or not.
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Yeah, those “African” bankers really did a number on Ol’ Uncle Sam!
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Someguy
Franklin Raines probably had a larger role in facilitating the sub prime mortgage than anyone.
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Somehow, I think there are more than a few nations in the world who would disagree with you.
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::cough:: scapegoat! ::cough::
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@ duckduckgoofs,
You need to read closer. I have never said that “I despised those that hate their race”. I disagreed with another poster that posted that but I never agreed with that. I had an opinion that was entirely opposite, in fact. At least if you are white. If you are Black, then your race is an emblem of triumph. If you are White, then your race is an emblem of injustice.
That’s not batsh!t crazy … that’s batsh!t truth.
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Saying that everyone alive today benefited from whites is sort of biased colonies and what not might have benefited because of technology passed on to native peoples. Still a lot of non technologically advanced people were happy with their lives before that technology was given to them.
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Someguy
I’m sure there are plenty of nations who hate the US. Fugg ’em.
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Fantastic point, Rapheal. Why does everything default to technology when dealing with many Whites?
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Also speaking about technology the chinese and arabs were doing VERY well on it until they got into so many wars with the Europeans and the Mongol hordes. lol
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raphael Still a lot of non technologically advanced people were happy with their lives before that technology was given to them.
Yeah, I’m sure they were much happier with a 40% infant mortality rate and 35 year life expectancy.
>
>
JT That’s not batsh!t crazy … that’s batsh!t truth.
LOL! But seriously, I really am interested in your biography. Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get to be so wise? 🙂
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We could also reverse the Arab Trader argument. The fact that Europeans enslaved African people, doesn’t mean Arabs should get away with it. We could easily reverse Cultural “Marxism”, and instead of constantly picking on Europeans, we could constantly pick on Arabs.
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raphael Also speaking about technology the chinese and arabs were doing VERY well on it until they got into so many wars with the Europeans and the Mongol hordes. lol
Good for Arabs and Chinese. Are you Arab or Chinese?
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@duckduckgoofs
I think you’re really exaggerating that you do understand the mortality rate for natives went up when they contracted diseases from the Europeans right? Also 35 year life expectancy you’re really exaggerating. Also When europeans came they did bring technology yes it might have made life more comfortable, but with that technology it started wars and more disease. Also you seem to think Europeans were advanced like they are in modern times that wasnt the case 1700s Europe was very unfair the poor were very poor while the rich were very rich. They also had very bad hygiene, way lower year expectancy compared to today, also high infant mortality rate. I think in mid 1800s London 15,000 people died because of diseases cause by bad hygiene forcing them to make proper sewage systems.
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@duckduckgoofs
No offense but id never tell you my race youd probably make racist jokes but if youre assuming im black im not. Also im just explaining to you that not all non whites enjoyed science and making of technology. Also just because whites in the past made technology doesnt mean you, or even your ancestors did. Just because A german in the past made something and if you’re Polish doesnt mean just because theyre from the same Continent means they all have the same achievements. Im guessing you think anyone who is white is naturally talented.
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test
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raphael
Diseases spread around the globe all the time. Most start in Africa and Asia. I doubt Europeans wanted those diseases any more than anyone else. For you to scapegoat them for disease while giving others a pass is very selective and, quite honestly, more than a little bigoted. Let me ask you, if Amerindians had contacted others first would they not have still contracted those diseases?
Apparently, there is something wrong with the abbie’s blog. It seems to be censoring my comments.
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@Raphael
“Gold fever”. Look it up. Neither Native Americans nor Africans would have had as deleterious effect on Europe as Europe had on the Americas or Africa for that reason. Europe had nothing of value (aside from maladjusted ideas) to give to any of those continents. To this day, more than half of the world’s precious metal/jewel/oil supplies are directly transferred from “brown” countries to “white” countries. Aside from readily broken treaties, missible ideas and grain (American and Russian), nothing of value is imported from “white” countries to “brown” countries (and the “value” of the charity doesn’t come close to equalling the value of the infrastructure-necessary materials that Europe, America/Canada and East Asia drain from their “lessers”.). African countries receive (on average) ~$50 million in subsidies and charity (mostly in surplus food which would have otherwise gone to waste) for every billion dollars that leave the continent. Likewise with South America, which receives similar amounts of aid while providing tens of billions of dollars a year in gold alone (never mind the hard woods, drugs, non-Mohs 10 precious stones and other metals.)
Oh, wait. White countries also provide brown countries with massive amounts of ballistic weapons and justifications to use those weapons against their countrymen. So, in the end, brown people can live in a world in which they’re/we’re derided for our lack of civilisation/progress, while we send all of the building blocks of civilisation to white people and blow our own to bits because the white countries’ big business leaders use their politicians to foment dissent among us? Yay?
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Whites are idiots who rob the Third World to fill the coffers of Jewish bankers and Muslim oil sheiks, as well as their own ruling class.
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@dunkdunkmoose
You dont seem to know much about history and disease white europeans were the ones travelling and the natives they went to got diseases its historically documented. It has nothing to do with being bigoted. How can europe get diseases from other races when they didnt even travel to europe until the after colonies were formed.
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@dunkdunkmoose
are you a fan of michael savage?
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I fail to understand something here. Why should I or any other person allow ourselves to be the sum only of events and ancestors that passed 100 or 200 years ago? Their names are barely known. The events have been told and retold by so many self-interested people that the TRUTH of them cannot be really known. Why should I let those events re-create me in my own eyes, in my own thoughts? I refuse. I am who I am, because it is who I choose to be. I will not be forced into a class or a “type” because of events that happened centuries before my mother’s mother ever knew a man.
Slavery was wrong, no matter where, no matter how. It was simply wrong. I never was a slave. I never enslaved anyone. Just as one cannot be born a slave today because of who their great-grandparents were, I refuse to be born guilty of slavery because of who my great-grandparents were. I am neither black nor white. I am neither brown nor pale. See me only as a human, or don’t see me at all. I will not be a color or a label. I will be a person. What will you be?
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Most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it. But because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.
I don’t care how many guns the Europeans had. There was no way they could simply grab Africans for the Atlantic slave trade. They purchased them from sub-Saharan Africans and Arab slave traders. Europeans were only able to reach the interior of the African continent by the mid-to-late 19th century.
And by the way, Africans did not “sell their own kind”. African traders sold those Africans from other nations and tribes . . . people they considered nothing more than foreigners. Europeans, Asians and Native Americans did the same.
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I don’t understand why the Blacks posting on here say that things like “That part of their past makes White Americans uncomfortable. But instead of facing up to it, they have built up defences against it:”
Uh, I don’t feel uncomfortable about it at all. White Americans today aren’t responsible for slavery. Why the hell would I feel guilt for what other people did? I’m not “facing up to it” and taking the blame for what white people did in the past JUST BECAUSE I’M ALSO WHITE. I understand how horrible slavery was, but please don’t bitch to me about it (no one likes a whiner). When has wallowing in your sorrows done any good?
Why not concentrate on the present situation of Blacks and try to progress instead of crying about what your ancestors (not you) went through? Why not spend more time thinking about the injustices blacks face today? Don’t get me wrong, I understand it is our country’s sad history that has led to the impovrishment of black communities. Valuing history is one thing, but griping about it is another.
My point is: instead of running your trap, why not prove that Blacks can succeed in today’s society?
There comes a time when you got to step up.
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@IFyouDONTlikeAMURICAthenYOUcanGITout!
Blacks have already proven they can succed in today’s society with a black president, the highest grossing athletes and entertainers, black CEOs and CFOs, business owners, governors, mayors, judges, etc. Anything whites have achieved in this country, blacks have done so as well. Even in the days of legalized slavery, there were black business owners, landowners, authors, inventors, etc. So blacks don’t need to prove anything to anyone….they’ve done so from the beginning.
Without free black slave (and white “indentured”) labor, “Amurica” would not be as great as you believe it is today, just as surely as China would not be the great superpower it has become without cheap labor. So blacks can complain about whatever they want since they were the main reason America grew in power and wealth so quickly, and this country owes a great debt to them, which remains unpaid.
But it’s not just slavery. Perhaps you forget the system of segregation and apartheid that existed up until the 60s, in which most Americans were alive to witness. So yes, many whites living today are directly responsible for the oppression of blacks in America.
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@ resjan
Amurica replied to you but I deleted it due to racial slurs.
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@abagond
Not surprised. I guess I hit a nerve. If what I said was untrue, then he should have been able to respond with legitimate rebuttals, not slurs. Denigration was his way of deflecting his guilt and/or ignorance.
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@resjan
Lies. The terms “welfare leech” or “entitlement guzzler” have no racial connotations. There are white people on welfare too dumb ass. She was just playing the race card as usual, and didn’t want you to see my brilliant rebuttal. 🙂
I will bless you all with some parting words:
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Amurica,
Incorporating racial slurs in your rebuttal makes it all the more immature, not brilliant by any means. And at first I was going to ignore your comment, but I can’t pass this up.
If you don’t feel uncomfortable, fine. But don’t make us feel uncomfortable about talking about it especially when YOU came here on your own free will. No one forced you to come, but you felt entitled to put in your two cents in a topic that wasn’t meant for you in the first place.
Yes. White people today were no around during slavery. None of us were around during slavery. That’s a no brainer. That doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be discussed.
Slavery was a part of American history. Deal with it. It’s a part of history you hate to face seeing as how you’re here ranting about how we talk about it. It is also one of the worst human atrocities in history.
It can not be denied, excused or rewritten because the black people who are here today are proof that it happened. And they live with the scars of that and other horrible moments in the past due to the fact that they are black and therefore less-than-human. It is that same mindset that brought you here chastising us as if we are children.
Why is any topic about race, including the history of blacks in America which includes slavery, automatically seen as whining? It seems that whenever we discuss our experiences which include not-so-pleasant moments in race, it must mean we are complaining for no good reason – according to folks like you. To you we should just shut up and be happy no matter what.
Not gonna happen.
You see, White America are overprivileged not just in money but by the simple fact they are white. It all came from their history of conquest, domination, abuse, slavery, discrimination, and dehumanization all in the name of white supremacy.
You may not be responsible for this, but you sure as hell inherited the privileges, and anyone, no matter who it is, must realize it, acknowledge it, and try to repair it.
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You are on the money , Brothawolf, and great points Resjan
Coming to Brazil, from America, one of the most blatent thing that was obvious is how much the African slave trade to the Americas, created dynamics that are absolutly affecting our societies today.
They have created divisions, discrimination, class lines, marginalisation, colorisation, etc
There is no doubt what so ever that this is true….and most black people arent asking for reperations, they are just asking for white people to get off their back and as a white person, you are darned right , I think we have to take some kind of responsibility for the situation we created.
Defending white people , holding on to whiteness and putting down black people or making up things about them, is just wallowing in ignorance , and, is taking the low road as a people
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@Amurica
“welfare leech” or “entitlement guzzler” are completely irrelevant to the conversation. But since you brought them up, you’re right that it transcends race as most welfare program recipients are white. In fact, whites are the top recipients of every type of federal welfare program there is, including 86% of all veteran’s benefits, 88% of all medicare, 90% of both retirement and widow’s benefits, 79% of disability insurance and 72% of survivor’s beneifts.
Then, there’s your system of “corporate welfare” which provides grants, subsidies, tax breaks, etc. given by the gov’t to private corporations.
In a free country, you’re allowed to disagree, complain, moan, etc. without having to leave. This country was never all white, and never will be, and so you have no right to decide who should “get out.” Anyone born in the U.S. is just as “Amurican” as you and has the right to complain about whatever they wish.
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If the roles were reversed, whites still would have white privilege, for example, less chance of being raped in prison.
Also, many whites whine about people of color being welfare leeches, but fear saying this in public, because they would lose their job, and… need welfare!!!
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…..yeah, the banks got more welfare than anyone , didnt they ?
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My self worth is not built upon being white. I could care less what the color of my skin is. BTW you don’t have to be white to be a racist. I say that because I’m feeling hostility in your words. The world is full of 6 billion individuals. Race only exists because we say it does.
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@ anonymous
What you consciously believe has little bearing on how you subconsciously feel and act.
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Everybody says there is this RACE problem.. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realise I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the the final solution to the BLACK problem??
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man would not object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable con-servatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
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What a twisted comment….no one is suggesting what you are saying.People want to be treated fairly , with out discrimination and obsticles always thrown in their path…and they are sick of the rationalisations like these
Genocide on white people ? You have to be kidding me…this is exactly the twisted logic that is mind boggling in its low leval
For the hundred thousandth time, black people didnt invent racism, white people did, to justify their slavery, capturing people and ripping them away from their homelands. How can the people who were the object of this racism suddenly turn into the racists ? If its disgust with the bs of white people with thoughts like yours, who can blame them? its not racism if you are backpeddling against this kind of logic…
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“Genocide on white people ? You have to be kidding me…this is exactly the twisted logic that is mind boggling in its low leval”
Actually it’s sorta true.
Whites around the world are in fact disappearing, from North America, and Europe being the top ones.
Don’t get me wrong, I personally don’t care but the fact is Europeans and those of European descent are not having enough children and policies of unlimited immigration of non-europeans and multiculturalism are indeed genociding Europeans from the world.
And there is no place where Europeans can go to be among themselves (this is where the WN folks tend to come in).
Ethnic Europeans won’t be around soon.
V-9 (or whatever his name was on here) mentioned it before, enough that it peaked my interesting and I’ve been reading sources online which does state that sooner or later without honest discussion on the topic, Ethnic Europeans which include those of the white phenotype will be gone.
Thing is it’s not just Europeans, Africans are second to being knocked out aswell. So TruthBeTold does have some merit in the ramblings of African Americans being taken out .. just the wrong source of it.
When no one believes in race, why should they believe the original habitants of a country deserve to choose what’s best for themselves, even if that includes closing their country off to kept their ethnicity alive?
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@ anti-genocide
The main reason countries allow immigrants in great numbers into their borders is to fill jobs that domestic born people cannot or will not do. If Whites do not have the numbers or are just unwilling to work those jobs, who’s fault is that? Since White people are so smart, as many of them claim, they should have planned ahead. Unfortunately, the mentality among many Whites is to get someone else to do their dirty work. If that takes food out of White mouths, who is really to blame?
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I find your propensity to see ‘race’ as static, and perfected divisions of humanity, that must be preserved just as they are, to be interesting. It’s something like looking at a world map and opining the fact that in 1000 years most of the nations and their boundaries will have changed dramatically with the flow of time. You’re like a man standing waist deep in a spring river holding out his hands against the current in an effort to stop the water.
“Stop flowing river! You’re just perfect at THIS very moment!!!
but the very nature and beauty of a river is that it flows.
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@King
“You’re like a man standing waist deep in a spring river holding out his hands against the current in an effort to stop the water.”
Indeed, but I’m not the only one who shows this trait. I just have no emotional attachment to it, but it is a very interesting topic I’ve been fond of for awhile now.
I’m waiting to see how this debate unfolds in the world, because as we both know, hands won’t stop the current, but a dam will.
I’m interested to see how attached people are to the notion of race. Will the hands of time continue what has already been going on for ages where the mixing of race and culture create new horizons, or will human intervention make an appearence and create static nation-states, culture, and people?
We can only wait patiently, and see how it goes.
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@ Yawn
Agreed. But there will be no dam—we’ve gotten way beyond that. Have a look at the European Union, and the world banking system, and the worldwide web. The troglodytes of any hue who think they’re going to wall themselves in from the river will soon find that stagnant water has many disadvantages. But time is the key to change. Most people have a viewpoint that spans only a few decades beyond their own lifetimes. most of their dreams and concerns about society will be irrelevant a few centuries.
But there will always be ‘race,’ of a kind, it just won’t mean the same thing. Those who think that mixing phenotypes will result in everyone looking more or less the same have no concept of how genetic variation works.
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@King
“Agreed. But there will be no dam—we’ve gotten way beyond that. Have a look at the European Union, and the world banking system, and the worldwide web. The troglodytes of any hue who think they’re going to wall themselves in from the river will soon find that stagnant water has many disadvantages. But time is the key to change. Most people have a viewpoint that spans only a few decades beyond their own lifetimes. most of their dreams and concerns about society will be irrelevant a few centuries.”
Ahh but the EU is currently facing rising nationalism (of racial and cultural types) but we’ll see how that fairs in the future. Indeed the banking system is so integrated that all countries aren’t immunue to each others pitfalls anymore.
And we’ve seen such attempts in history of the walling of foreign invasion, but that was partially ralated to other stuff distinct of race.
And indeed, what most people society as it’s current form will be nothing but a memory in the coming future, I believe race(hopefully) will no longer play any part of human lives, nor will politics be created strictly due to such.
“Those who think that mixing phenotypes will result in everyone looking more or less the same have no concept of how genetic variation works”
I agree, the thought that mixing of phenotypes will create some utopia of beige/brown people is a fool’s thought, and not based on reality.
Bravo, I usually never enjoy having conversations but this was enlightening.
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No, I predict that the European Union will not last in it’s current form, but it does demonstrates a certain human tendency and agenda. The internet, the jet airplane, and media in general, have irrevocably changed the world. Complete isolation is no longer an option for most cultures, and genetic isolation is an evolutionary dead end.
For all the caterwauling, in a long-view sense, there will soon be no “Black people” or “White people” or even “Asian people.” But we must all play our assigned parts in the mean time – the play must go on 😉
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@King
“No, I predict that the European Union will not last in it’s current form”
Couldn’t agree more! Whatever the Europeans tried to do with the EU seems to have caused more problems than it was worth. I’d say it was a good experiment, but nothing lasts forever.
“The internet, the jet airplane, and media in general, have irrevocably changed the world. Complete isolation is no longer an option for most cultures, and genetic isolation is an evolutionary dead end. ”
Indeed, the old world thinking of genetic isolation falls flat with the age of technology. Travelling to remote areas has never been easier, and as such genetic mixing was bound to happen, and will happen. No more are the days when travels took weeks, months, years.
“For all the caterwauling, in a long-view sense, there will soon be no “Black people” or “White people” or even “Asian people.” But we must all play our assigned parts in the mean time – the play must go on”
Yea, for the time being of course. We still need to see how countries (both east and west) deal with ethnocentric thoughts though.
I think it’ll be a little bump in the road, but not something that will prevent much.
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Why do all these white people keep crying about white genocide no one wants to marry you white people except those black dudes who get super fat blonde girls that even white people dont want. I think white people just want an excuse to complain because they arent the center of attention anymore.
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I recently wrote a paper on reparations, in which I had to do my own research on the in depth slave to support why African-Americans should get reparations (It was an A paper with citations and all and if those who are interested may email @ babykia91@yahoo.com and i can email it to you), but I really like this post and would like to note that as far as the issue of slavery is concerned, the slavery in Africa was no where close to the horrors that happened during the transatlantic slave trade and things were even more so deeper than just rape and bad beatings by a whip; but to argue the point Africans owned/sold slaves too: that is not to say some African countries did not treat slaves bad, but also some blacks in America owned slaves (a mere 1% did at least) and maybe they did treat blacks slaves just as bad as the whites did too but that is an argument over majority and minority. Majority over whites own blacks slaves and minority of blacks owned blacks slaves. Lets not argue majority and minorities nothings ever 100%. However another interesting fact is, for the most part, only rich white-americans owned slaves and thats a minority because, especially back in those days and even now, there were more poor whites than there are rich whites…..On a side note, I don’t know why white people trip over the issue of slavery so much, 9 times outta ten if reparations whur to be provided and they could identify who to give it too and who should be paying for it….roughly about 2% of the average white-american (and a percentage of multi million corporations) would have to pay for it and only maybe 90% of the black-american population would recieve it, because if you were a Nigerian, with no relation to slavery, who came to America in the 1940s you aint getting nothing and if your white with poor white decendents or maybe even a decendent from an irish indentured servent/or slave, you aint gotta pay noting either.
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Some counter arguments to some points:
Africans sold their own people as slaves.
Africans are still selling slaves.
-I thnk my first post counter those arguments
Arab traders sold slaves too.
“Slavery goes back thousands of years.”
All races have practised slavery.
-Yeah but there’s a reason why the transatlantic slave trade is still an issue of today. And it isn’t just an issue in this country.
Whites stopped slavery.
-Its funny when people say that only because the emacipation proclaimation ended slavery to an extent, and the 13th amendment complely abolish slavery but then here comes the next trial for african-americans:things such as jim crow, NAACP all this extra shit comes up as a result of slavery.
My family never owned slaves.
-Which is why you, in the issue of reparations, you wouldn’t have to worry about that and if the government did decide to tax you more I would protest lol…The only thing I would worry about is my people, (as far as white people), had the ordasity, the potential to do such horrible things to another group of people and have been doing these types of things over history (The holocaust, Joseph Stalin, the Spanish inquistion, the crusaders etc…)
That was Ancient History.
You are living in the past.
Get over it!
It was the times.
-Slavery effects African-Americans today more so than people understand (If you want a lil more information on that my reparation paper is a gud start.)
Slavery did not make economic sense.
-Well they didn’t do it because they hated black people,I don’t believe so initially at least, there was a lot of monetary value.
Whites got to where they are by their own hard work
-That may be true for the most part but a lot of white-owned (I can’t find any source that says blacks owned them at least) business profited off a slavery, the Brown familly, who owns or at least started Brown Univerisity, profited off of making slave ships!
Blacks are better off in America than in Africa
Africans were savages.
-These are just plain ignorant statements that I wouldn’t even take anymore time than I’m doing now to retort on…do research people. Don’t let your mind function off of history channel and what you learned in school, theres always more to it…you don’t even have to go to an all black website or anything like that to know whats really going on
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interesting statement:” You don’t have to be white to be rasicist” from what I was taught in high school, racism began in America when the poor white’s realized Hey we may be poor and white but at least we’re not black, there for the beginning of racial tension. I don’t how true that is but if I was rich, and in general terms, I owned slaves I don’t think particularly I would care about what color the slaves were but as long as I can flex the power I have over them and they get the work done when I want them too…the “Stanford prison experiment” is a good example of this because it had nothing to do with race…everybody in that experiment was white.
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People say race doesn’t matter, to some extent it doesn’t…..however imagine if you were the ONLY one left of your race and all other races still existed….does it matter now ??
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Kidnapping the victims was the ONLY thing that white people DIDN’T DO as far as the slave trade went.
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coastal Africans in trade with Europeans may have abducted people from other tribes for their European partners aka “sold their own people” but are they really responsible for what the Europeans who bought them did?
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I went to graduate school in England at a top university and graduated in 1997. I did a Master’s thesis that no one in England had ever thought of before and that most Americans (like me) had not thought of either. I did an interdisciplinary thesis about the portrayal (in print and in paintings/media) of African American women in the Antebellum South. Went to university archives all over the South and photocopied paintings, photographs dated 1860, poured over newspaper clippings from the time, came across many “wanted” posters that were seeking the capture of female slaves who escaped… it was a very SOBERING experience and I wrote my heart out about it. I do not know why I chose this topic except for the fact that there was something in the deepest part of me that had to tell the story of these women. Now, I did not tell the whole story– I am not claiming that. But, I wanted to bring to attention this group that even history books ignore. We rarely read history texts dedicated to the experience of the female slave or how society portrayed her and viewed her at the time. We rarely see photographs of these women. The most “haunting” part of the experience was when I would come across these archived photo albums in private collections that were dated between 1859-1863. I came across several where all of the family’s slaves were photographed. But the most disturbing part was they were all dressed in the white European clothing of the time even though there were still technically “owned”. Still, I guess that was not the most disturbing part. The most disturbing part was these women were postured by the photographers to sit stone still. Their faces were somber and their eyes contained a profound amount of pain. The pain in the eyes came through in the photographs– even 130 years later. It’s like their pain was reaching across space, across time, across all racial and class boundaries and speaking aloud– announcing the profound depth of loss they had experienced. They were all so young and all so full of pain. I can still see these women’s faces in my mind’s eye– the look in their eyes, the sadness, burned into my own.
I hope one day that scholars get a clue and tell these stories– and I am sure there are as many stories as there are women. I hope that one day historians see their experience as a worthwhile one. It is very humbling for those who happen to come across it. I hope one day this silence surrounding their very essence is no longer kept.
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^Wow Sarah, if you ever get chance to write a book on the subject of your thesis, it sounds like it might be both interesting and important.
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@ rj
“Kidnapping the victims was the ONLY thing that white people DIDN’T DO as far as the slave trade went.”
Absolutely incorrect. The origin of the word “kidnap” actually comes from Europeans’ theft of children (both in Africa and Europe) during the era of the transatlantic slave trade.
Gomes Eannes de Azurara, recorded that the Portuguese’s first African slaves were KIDNAPPED (mid 1400s):
“And as soon as they reached the land, Stevam Affonso leapt out, and
five others with him…they saw come out of it a negro BOY, stark naked, with a spear in his had. HIM THEY SEIZED at once, and coming up close to the hut, they lighted upon a GIRL, his sister, who was about EIGHT YEARS OLD.”
Yes, it is evident that the Transatlantic slave trade began with Portuguese traders kidnapping young children…
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We want to condemn Africans for “selling their own people” but we don’t want to condemn what whites did “to their own people”.If England oppresses Ireland,or if England goes to war with France or Germany invades Poland,we recognize it as that,not Europeans attacking their own people.BIG DOUBLE STANDARD
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I love how some conservatives say”well Africans are still doing slavery”(funny how they can’t name one country in Africa) when there’s human trafficking on every continent including Europe and North America to day. What are they trying to prove by saying that modern day slavery is only in Africa?
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Unfortunately the arguments are valid when blacks want to continually blame whites for everything. It’s racist as well to be pointing fingers at those who never took part in slavery nor ever had a slave etc. What are those people supposed to face? Guilt for others behaviors?? No. I won’t accept that. I didn’t nothing and was raised to treat others as you want to be treated. I will NOT take responsibility for another’s behavior. THEY ALONE ARE RESPONSIBLE. Reverse racism here as usual
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^ The bare fact that you use a term such as “reverse racism” shows you’re probably not sensible enough to be taken seriously.
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What the fuck?
Whoever wrote this page
Clearly needs to go back to school and learn ur facts right.
Excuse.me africans werent savagers
We were perfectly fine before the british people thought they cud invade the world
and white people didnt work hard?
The hell?
Most of thr slaves their did like everything
And for godsake
We will not forget the past its like a scar on all black people that u cant erase or force us too
Remeber that before you go opening ur mouth and spitting out something u wudnt understand because maybe ur fat somewhere and think u hav the mind to feel emotions that went on then. When u dont okay
Keep ur opinions to urself sheesh u dont know anything
Go grab urself a beer and wall back when u have matured enough too.be an adult
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Arguing that African slavery was more genteel than European chattel slavery is akin to saying it is better to be shot in the head with a 22 caliber rather than a 45 caliber Who in their right mind would choose either? Furthermore how does it absolve any people who participated in or profited from these crimes against humanity?
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Doing work for someone to pay off a debt or being taken as a prisoner of war can’t possibly be as bad as being a piece of lifelong chattel and your children suffer the same fate.I’m not condoning “African slavery” (from my understanding,many languages in Africa do not have a word for slave) or even slavery in Europe,but it couldn’t possibly be as harsh as racialized lifelong chattel slavery on American plantations. I also am not sure if there were ever any “slaves” in Africa who picked cotton on plantations.Somebody tell me of some of them plantations in Africa?
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Most of you are very informational but has any one ever seen a movie by two Italians by the name of (goodbye uncle tom)???? if not i would suggest you do so!!!!!!! Just saying..
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and this might sound crazy but just like GINA said i shouldnt be held accountable for my ancestors actions right, which is what europeans have done alot, took our history like their werent more righteous men and women in africa. im pretty sure we didnt enslave europeans but for some reason more of them are racist than ones who arent but no one should held accountable right!? WRONG!! as long as more of them look at me as a black instead of human ill always look at them crazy. if i pull up to a light and a cauc is next to me i swear i lock my doors, ayy you stole once youll do it again…. not!!!! and one more thing does it really make since that if africans were in america before columbus why would we need to sell them villages of people, now i can see us with workers in africa (not slaves dont put that on us) who im pretty sure were more free than we are today..
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@Ben
Thanks for the film suggestion. I read some detailed reviews, and it appears to be too much for me to watch (and I get a sense it inaccurately portrays the Black Panthers). But I do hope European-Americans choose to watch it, b/c I know how uneasy it will be for them…
“if i pull up to a light and a cauc is next to me i swear i lock my doors, ayy you stole once youll do it again…. ”
‘But, that was so long ago!’ is another one of their common retorts.
“does it really make since that if africans were in america before columbus why would we need to sell them villages of people”
Historically speaking, the first Europeans to enslave West Africans did so by kidnapping children. Many years later, Europeans crippled Africa by cutting off its trade routes, and so Africans were forced to trade directly with the Europeans who, of course, wanted more slaves…
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This was written by a black man who has a thing against whites. Search a different page about slavery and you will find information from a white man who is racist against black people. You will never get the actual 100% truth
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Abagond tells it closer to the 100% truth than most other people
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The dealer is worse than the user, so whoever was selling was also captured and killed. I think you need to face up to it. By the way look for the origin of the the word slave ” slavik”
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You’re forgetting that Afrikan Kingdoms such as Ashanti, about half the population was already slaves. Estimated from 1/3 to 1/2. They sold their own citizens that were already slaves to Europeans and actually sent complaints that the UK stopped buying slaves.
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This is the most Ignorant and hypocritical thing I’ve ever read. That is all…
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That’s a far cry from the greedy demand for plantation products that led to the chattel treatment of blacks and led to the categorization of black people as inferior to whites which continued in the form of segregation,kkk,redlined housing areas,etc that continued after the system was abolished.
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who told you that ? black tells you how you look ,not who you are. 95 % of the slaves that were stolen from Africa are the “Children of Israel AKA Shemetic ” who were sold into slavery by the “Hamites aka the Africans “as if you already didn’t no.so before you start runnin your mouth make sure you what you are talking about.
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However people try to slice it,there is no seller without a buyer and there is no supply without a demand.If Africans gave other Africans away to whites,whites still had a demand and came all the way to Africa to pick up Africans because they were too lazy to pick their own cotton.
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@SlavicPride
“about half the population was already slaves. Estimated from 1/3 to 1/2. They sold their own citizens that were already slaves to Europeans and actually sent complaints that the UK stopped buying slaves.”
You’re incorrect to say “their own citizens,” as these were mainly Fante prisoners of war.
The “complaints” to which you are referring occurred in 1807 when Britain stopped the slave trade (Slave Trade Act)…long after the British, Portuguese and Dutch cut off the African trade networks which made African nations poor and thus dependent on the growing slave trade.
In simple terms, none of these African nations in the region were participating in any slave trade when the Portuguese first arrived in the 1500s. It is instead a consequence of many years of European involvement in that region.
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How sad and insufficient (because lacking truly valid economic analysis) these responses to Abagond all are, even the best of them.
It seems that only Thaddeus took up any real attempt at addressing capitalism at all, and he’s totally wrong headed about it nevertheless. Abagond would have been better served if he had followed up his basically correct and insightful observations about the unprecedented SIZE, and SCOPE of the Corporate Transatlantic Slave Trade if he had written also about the enormous ORGANIZATION and GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION of world economics that resulted from it, namely, the murder of post-feudal mercantilism and the replacement of that fundamentally more humanist, liberatory, and progressive form of market economics with a comparatively evil and aggressive form that at its inception took undeterred greed as its forte rather than free market development. So far most of the responses are longer than Abagond’s original post, so to be fair to him, he didn’t post anything meant to be exhaustive.
You are wrong-headed Thaddeus about several claims you press here. Just to take two of the most egregious, you are wrong first of all to say that Africans are being presented by Abagond as somehow ‘not as bad’ as Europeans. You set up a straw man with Abagond’s point for your own convenience with that distortion of his argument.
He is precisely arguing, by the implication of his quite lucid argument, that Europeans are NOT ‘bad’; there IS no ‘bad’ or ‘good’ or ‘better African slavery’ or ‘worse European slavery’ in Abagond’s analysis. He (or she, I’m not certain) is doing an ECONOMIC and MATERIAL analysis not of ‘slavery’ (which you accurately point out is universal, and was African, Roman, Greek, Persian, Asian, and as far as we know, even Neanderthal), but of the Corporate Transatlantic Slave Trade, and it’s transformation of global human culture, a detrimental transformation, I myself would add, and one whose pernicious influence on human development has lasted for four hundred years. The invention of ‘race’ is only one of the results of this pernicious influence. You are wrong in your noodling reflections to the effect of racism being just another extension of demonized ‘otherness’ and thus concluding that the racism of the slave trade was coextensive with the ‘otherness’ of African cultures that practiced taking slaves. ‘African Otherness’ did not found the largest, longest, and most globally distorting force in human history—corporate capitalism, which is second in implication and scope only to WAR itself as a human activity that has dictated the flawed course of the human race and the human condition.
Which leads to your second major fallacy: that capitalism (as you wrongly claim about the corporate slavery that was the Transatlantic Trade) was trans-cultural, or trans-human, emerging with some degree of simultaneity or perhaps of equivalency. This idea of The Trade and all its attendant ills (national-to-global expropriation as an industry, industrialized genocide, of the Taino, the Arawak, and the Caribe peoples of the New World, for example, and eventual global colonialism that contributed to Europe’s primitive accumulation) is patently false, and CANNOT in fact be true given the nature and origin of capitalism. For instance, prior to The Global Trade, human history offered up three ways one would become a slave: 1. Due to losing a war; 2. As the result of a debt, and 3. Fiat (the whim of some king, Pope, Duke, Chieftain, warlord, or Khan). As respondents here mention, every culture throughout time has practiced slavery. However, the difference that The Trade introduced was the mechanization, mass-quantification, and industrialization leading to globalized profit that provided primitive accumulation and world dominance not for Africans, or Arabs, (or even Europeans!), but for the companies that began by trading tea, evoleved into wretched traders of human flesh, and ended in the power to invade and oppress Africa, Asia, and India (while they retarded and distorted the development even of Europe!)
Like many of the fallacy laden thinkers Abagond is aiming at, you are describing MERCANTILISM and MARKET ECONOMY when you talk of cultural equivalencies, but the subject is not market economy, it is corporate capitalism. Corporations were born as a result of the Transatlantic Trade, not the other way around. Early Capitalism as a true market theory of economics existed approximately fifty years after the end of market economics driven mercantilism before Early Capitalism too, was eviscerated by the hegemony of the charter corpus-company. Early capitalism was transformed into something that, ironically, strove against markets, against market development, exchange, diversity, competition, individual freedom, and against all the innovations we associate with FREE markets that had been characteristic of mercantilism’s own most profound impact on human development: the weakening of monarchy, the end of feudalism, the freeing of human innovation, and the empowerment of Europe’s most significant contribution to world culture, as incipiently expressed by the political innovation of Ancient Athenian democracy: individualism and human rights.
You see, Thaddeus, what you totally miss is that you are shouting inside a much, much bigger box than you seem to know, which is why you fail to appreciate what Abagond’s greater, larger argument is: ‘Africans’ did not sell themselves into the TRIANGLE SLAVE TRADE and neither did Arabs sell them into it, since the slave trade was corporate, not cultural. Profits were corporate, not national (neither Africa, nor Europe had any true ‘national’ identity, and the early corporations strove to keep it that way and to keep both populations divided and underdeveloped for the sake of power, control, and profit). Simply put, it was not “Europe” or “Whites” that or who were responsible for The Trade, since the corporations born out of The Trade were not acting in the name of Europe, or Europeans, but in unison with Europeans’ enemies: The Catholic Church, the monarchs, and the landed, hereditary gentry, all of whom had been placed at RISK of EXTINCTION by actual capitalism-mercantilism and by the invention of Guttenberg’s western version of the Asian printing press and the advance of literacy following The Bubonic Plague and feudal barbarism.
The Slave Trade was about economics, not ‘race.’ ‘Race’ is a myth anyway, as French philosopher Roland Barthes has argued. Race itself is a red herring, and was used as such BY the embryonic corporations, (Dutch East India and British East India companies among them—the same companies whose anti-market control, pseudo-military domination, and political totalitarianism via their monopolies and charter powers granted by monarchs, provoked the American colonists to rebel against England). That same despotism, supported by The Church, the kings, and the Old Dispensation of ruling classes, also led, with their support, to two hundred years of rape and expropriation of natural resources from Africa, India, and Asia–the crimes of colonialism. The primitive accumulation that these companies and the enabling ruling classes of the European nations achieved through slave labor on a global scale, is what provided the seed money for the eventual creation of a global European (as in corporate) supremacy—‘White’ supremacy, if you wish.
Thaddeus, you have taken one step back from the midst of those whom Abagond accuses of fallacious thinking, but you are merely committing the exact same fallacies from a mere few steps remove—you are just as wrong as those Abagond (successfully) refutes. For one who promotes books, maybe you ought to read a few more of them. Reading is fundamental. Try “From Columbus to Castro” by Eric Williams for a start. Than try “The Influence of Oversea Expansion on England to 1700” by J.E. Gillespie. Try also, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney and follow that up with “How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America,” by Dr. Manning Marable, for some economic understanding of why ‘race’ is not the force behind so-called ‘white’ supremacy— capitalism is. Race is merely a McGuffin.
-Prof Ray Waller January 2013, Wayne State University, Detroit
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By the way, Thaddeus, the books you recommend do not address the discussion Abagond is having. Your recommendations, tediously, reiterate exactly what our host is trying to critique: the non sequitar of Americans using the ‘guilty child fallacy’ by pointing a finger at his sister and saying, “she hit me too!’. Even if the subject were African slavery, the books you recommend are either by biased scholars or by scholars whose Africana history expertise is limited. They definitely are limited in terms of economic theory.
For instance, you have your foot firmly planted in your bottom just as awkwardly regarding your flippant attitude toward the holocaust. You see, given the SUBJECT of my above post (please don’t straw dog or misrepresent me, ok?), which is the transformative, industiralized, mechanized, and highly rationalized nature of mass expropriation that was the true hallmark of the brutality of The Slave Trade. I would argue that no, one cannot readily conflate the genocide against every other ethnic group with the genocide European Jews were subjected to. The holocaust, like the corporate slave trade, was a unprecedented example in the modern age, perhaps the first example, of iINDUSTRIALIZED killing on a mass scale that nearly wiped out a race of people, done by monsters (the Nazis) who carried it out in a highly quantified, rationalized, purely modernist manner, with as much ratiocination as they were lacking human empathy. The difference, you see, is not one of degree, but of IMPLICATION. After the holocaust, modernism was marked by a hollowing out of emotional and ethical affect that completely overturned the early hopes and faith of the first modern artists such as the Futurists, Surrealists, and DaDaists like Marcel Duchamp and Andre Breton. It is that significance some respondents hgere have tried to drive home to you, but you seem to be lacking insight where this consideration ois concerned.
At any rate, mass murder is not a ranking contest in which one measures degrees of horror or liters of blood shed. Neither is history. History is not a board game or a zero sum game; it is instead a manifestation of our hopes, our fears, and our failures as a human race–all of us, including you, Brother.
It would do for you to get much more Afrocentric reading under your belt, such as Manning Marable, and Harold Cruse, or if Anglo scholars are more to your liking, you absolutely must read Robin Blackburn’s book, “Slavery and the Rise of Capitalism.” You might want to refrain from derailing people until you have a bit more intellectual heft in the matter under discussion– more broadly based books to refer to in terms of global economics, and less rhetorical slight of hand. Blackburn’s book directly supports Abagond and directly addresses your fallacious reassertion of the ‘Africans had slavery too,’ guilty child fallacy. You see, it’s a fallacy not because it isn’t true (your sister his you too) but because it is quite simply a non sequitar, given Abagando’s point.
Matt Wrack, in a lucid review of Blacburn’s book writes in the journal, SOCIALISM TODAY:
“THE HORRORS OF the New World slave system cannot be expressed in figures alone but the shear scale of these is staggering. The slave population of the Americas reached 33,000 in 1700, nearly three million in 1800 and peaked at over six million in 1850. During this period a million and a half died during the passage to the New World, large numbers died beforehand and between a tenth and a fifth died within a year of landing.
This huge and businesslike system remains one of the great tragedies of history. In The Making of New World Slavery, now available in paperback, Robin Blackburn suggests that it points us towards the “dark side of progress” (p5) in that the inhumanity of the system developed side by side with huge steps forward in knowledge and technique, such as the exploration of the Atlantic and the development of new navigational techniques. At the heart of the system lay a huge contradiction. The people who colonised the New World were largely those who rejected most strongly the old order in Europe. Yet just as unfree labour was dying out in Europe it began to develop on a massive new scale in the Americas. This contradiction was only resolved by the complete racialisation of New World slavery so that skin colour and slavery became inextricably linked.
Apologists for the system argue that slavery had always existed. This may be true but history would become meaningless if reduced to such generalities. History must aim to uncover the historic specificity of social forms as well as their links with the past. The Atlantic slave system did indeed emerge from previous systems but in the process slavery was extended in scale and transformed in form.
Blackburn traces the emergence of the slave trade from existing patterns of slavery in Africa. The story follows the Portuguese discoveries and the origins of the Atlantic slave trade through to the emergence of Brazilian sugar from 1600. However, it was the English colonial system which really developed and eventually dominated the Atlantic trade and the system of slave plantations. The profits of slavery were central to the primitive accumulation which paved the way for English industrialisation.”
I suspect, Thaddeus, that the passage beginning, “Apologists for the system argue that slavery had always existed” is the one to which you might want to pay the greatest attention.
Have fun reading.
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Okay how I see it that is what happened with our ancestors why are we still so hell bent on what happened with the slave trade, why are we held to what our ancestors did? why cant we just move on and treat everyone the way our ancestors should have treated people. So that being said everyones ancestors made mistakes, we should just learn from them and be wiser then they were.
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Some people, mainly whites who dont even know any blacks are suffering from white guilt because of the centuries of racism.Therre making up things like “blacks are still mad over slavery” and they are trying to pick and choose facts and reinterpret history that happened in the very beggining to absolve what happened over the centuries after the fact.It’s them that can’t get over it and move on,not blacks.
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In a effort of shutting Tad up, I’ll write this much from a UNITED KINGDOM ARTICLE:
“Slavery existed in Africa, but it was not the same type of slavery that the Europeans introduced. The European form was called chattel slavery. A chattel slave is a piece of property, with no rights. Slavery within Africa was different. A slave might be enslaved in order to pay off a debt or pay for a crime. Slaves in Africa lost the protection of their family and their place in society through enslavement. But eventually they or their children might become part of their master’s family and become free. This was unlike chattel slavery, in which enslaved Africans were slaves for life, as were their children and grandchildren.
The treatment of slaves in Africa varied widely. Ottobah Cuguano, a former slave, remembered slaves as being ‘well fed … and treated well’. Olaudah Equiano, another former slave who wrote an account of his life, noted that slaves might even own slaves themselves. In larger states some slaves worked in government administration, and might become an important state or royal official with wide ranging powers. Other slaves in Africa might work within their master’s household as domestic servants or as agricultural labourers. Others were sent to work in the gold mines of West Africa. Pictured here are two weights in the shape of a soldier and captive. They were used to weigh gold dust, which was itself used as a type of money. Mining for gold was hard and dangerous work, and many died.
Africans usually enslaved ‘other’ people, not their own particular ethnic, or cultural, group. Slaves were taken as prisoners of war, or enslaved in payment for debt or as punishment for crime. This enslavement was usually on a small scale. It was enough to supply the demand for slaves within Africa, but not enough to supply the demand from outside. As the demand from outsiders such as Arabs and Europeans grew, warfare and raids to get slaves and the kidnapping of individuals increased. Europeans wanted to buy enslaved Africans to work on the land they owned on the Caribbean islands and in America. They chose Africans for a number of reasons, one being because they were used to farming. Pictured here is a 20th century hoe, a tool used to work the soil. It is from the Igbo people of Nigeria, West Africa.”
SOURCE: http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/people-involved/enslaved-people/enslaved-africans/africa-slavery/
Then I will read some things the white devil has done:
“In 1787 an enslaved man in Maryland raped a free black woman. The story comes to us from the female victim in the incident, Elizabeth Amwood. One white man, William Holland, had her “Pull up her Close and Lie Down he then Called a Negrow Man Slave” “and ordered him to pull Down his Britches and gitt upon the said Amwood and to bee grate with her.” A fourth individual in this horrific scene, a white man named John Pettigrew, operating with Holland, pointed a pistol at the unnamed enslaved man and Elizabeth Amwood. All the while, Holland taunted them both, asking if it “was in” and “if it was sweet.” Afterward, William “went up into the Company and Called for Water to wash his hand, saying he had bin putting a Mare to a horse.””
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_sexuality/summary/v020/20.3.foster.html
“The treatment of slaves in the United States varied by time and place, but was generally brutal and degrading. Whipping, execution and sexual abuse including rape were common.
Slaves were usually prevented from becoming literate, in order to hinder aspirations for escape or rebellion. In response to slave rebellions such as that led by Nat Turner in 1831, some states prohibited slaves from holding religious gatherings for fear that such meetings could facilitate communication and lead to rebellion.
Medical care to slaves was usually provided by other slaves or by slaveholders’ family members. Some slaves possessed medical skills, such as knowledge of African folk remedies and midwifery.[1]
Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and/or imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but slaves were also sometimes abused to assert the dominance of their master or overseer.
The mistreatment of slaves frequently included rape and the sexual abuse of women. Many slaves were killed as a result of resisting sexual attacks. Others sustained psychological and physical trauma. The sexual abuse of slaves was partially rooted in the patriarchal nature of contemporary Southern culture and its view of women of any race as property.[citation needed] After 1662, when Virginia adopted the legal doctrine partus sequitur ventrem, sexual relations between white men and black women were regulated by classifying children of slave mothers as slaves regardless of their father’s race or status. After a few generations, numerous slaves were mixed-race (mulatto) offspring of such unions, although white Southern society abhorred sexual relations between white women and black men as damaging to racial purity.”
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States
If you are familiar to the gladiator games, the treatment of the N/As, indigenous people and animals of every cotenent on earth, you see white have history of enslaving, torturing and terrorizing everything that breaths. Even so-called ‘helpful’ inventions made by the white possions the air, like cars, jets and others. Estincts and mutates animal life and ruins their hibitate. The indigenous did not treat their home in the manor of whites, nor the members of their tribe and family as the white Nazis did to their fellow German Jews.
Honestly I just think you all are parisites
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@ B-girl: The information you share is enlightening to the unread (it’s a common history but so many people don’t read that it is unfortunately necessary to keep repeating these colloquia). HOWEVER, in catering to petty myths about ‘race’ your effort is flawed and you do a disservice to your own erudition, damaging the real cause of spreading knowledge about the corporate slave trade. The real cause all of us should serve is to talk of New World slavery in the form of The Corporate Triangle Slave Trade, the form (chattel slavery) this blog focuses on. It is frankly contradictory for you to speak of the underlying historical aberration of chattel slavery and yet not talk about the true REASON for it–which was capitalism, not ‘race’, a mythologically fetishized ideology invented by the organizers of the slave trade in order to exploit an arbitrary environmental adaptation in order to justify mass kidnapping, theft, and inter-generational involuntary servitude on an unprecedented level. ‘Race’ did not exist as a coherent, ideologically sound reality prior to The Trade itself.
‘White’ Europeans were never any more of less brutal AS A PEOPLE than anybody else in history, and in some instances, many examples of which can be found in the history of ancient Rome, or of the Aztec-Mayan civilization, or the history of the Zulu nation, some individual Europeans practicing the atrocities of The Trade were less brutal, than individuals in Africa, Asia, or Pre Columbian America, for whatever that’s worth, which isn’t much. My point is, on the issue of falsely valorizing African slavery I whole heartedly agree with Thaddeus. African slavery was not somehow more ‘enlightened’ than European slavery in some sense that implies greater humanity in Africans and lesser humanity in ‘White’ Europeans. If African slavery was less dehumanizing as a practice than European New World slavery the difference is not one of ‘race’ nor of degree, but of the nature of chattel slavery, and that nature arises from treating people as capital, not from European ‘whiteness’ (of course, not all Europeans were or are ‘White’–Anglo).
The ultimate irony in your catering to the racial myth is in that ‘race’ is in fact one of the EFFECTS of the corporate slave trade, not a CAUSE: race was invented by slave trading corporations such as British East India Co. (BEIC) and Dutch East India Co. (DEIC) with the cooperation of The Catholic Church, mercantile associations, and temporal governments simply to justify the massive displacement of populations, disruption of maritime routines, distortion of ordinary patterns of travel, destruction of local and micro economies, overturning of guild and merchant unions in Europe, imposition of usurious forms of banking that oppressed ordinary European citizens, and religious distortions as well as irrational actions indulged in by the elites of The Triangle Trade. To let your argument degenerate into the ugly lie of ‘White Devil’ dogma is to not only lose the logic and the intellectual integrity of your analysis, but is also to reinforce the very same corporate racist propaganda you should be deconstructing–you are reifying the project of the slave trade by indulging in the dogma invented by the slave trade.
Vituperation based merely upon race against ‘Whites’ involved in The Trade and the descendants of those ‘Whites’ is in fact irresponsible, making your analysis self-defeating. That’s not to mention how the true history of it all mitigates totally against such racial essentialism and reductionism: Europe was and is a continent, not a country, and that continent then as now was an absolute diversity of nations, states, kingdoms, localities, religions, tribes, ethnicities, and histories as complex and as ideologically diverse as was and is the continent of Afrika Herself. Not all Europeans profited from The Trade, not all had a say in its invention, nature, or progress, and in fact the majority actually suffered due to The Trade since The Trade enabled charter companies to grow into early corporations, and enabled corporate destruction of free markets, barter-economies, and cottage industry that had characterized early mercantilism (mercantilism had provoked the rise of a European middle class that had gradually moved toward overturning monarchy and serfdom only to give way to corporate capitalism, which gradually re-imposed a (new) form of industrialized serfdom that colonized large parts of the European population—Scotland, Wales, Ireland, North Spain, and Southern Italy among them).
Even here in the Americas it would be a stretch to claim that ‘Whites’ as a ‘race’ benefitted AS A RACE from the peculiar institution; that’s just as false as the foolish notion that Jews AS A PEOPLE benefitted from The Trade or somehow stood behind it, rather than the truth that individual Jewish people, acting as agents of CAPITALIST interests, profited in the context of class domination. The former is anti-Semitic (Ashkenazi or Sephardic, Ethiopian, it little matters which you would invoke, the point is that some arguments amount to bigotry more than logic) and the latter is economic analysis.
The primitive accumulation provided to Europe and to America by chattel slavery benefitted, indeed gave wings to the genocide and to the colonizing and profit exploiting projects of America’s class elites, both the Southern planter class Jefferson Davis represented and the northern industrial robber barons Abraham Lincoln represented—and both power blocs exploited Black labor; but both also actively ‘enslaved’ Anglo working classes, creating both a rural and an urban Anglo serfdom (whether ‘overseers’, slave catchers, slave ‘seasoners’,sharecroppers, subsistence farmers, urban menials, street workers, city vagrants, factory workers, manual laborers, or whatever and etc.)
But, never mind the overwhelming, global and New World economics you are ignoring in your analysis, because we could go on ad infinitum with examples of that.
Instead, perhaps it is sufficient to note that the overwhelmingly fallacious failure of your vituperative denunciation is ultimately a self-indulgence that always yields a fallacy when African Americans seek to use ‘white devil’ ideology as abasis to explain The Corporate Slave Trade. The emphasis of your vituperation is a focus on effect rather than on cause; namely, on the myth of ‘race’:
“If you are familiar to the gladiator[ial] games, the treatment of the N/As, indigenous people and animals of every cotenent [sic] on earth, you see white[s] have[a] history of enslaving, torturing and terrorizing everything that breathes”
The culprit in every example you name (including your comments about non-humane uses of technology, destruction of global habitats, and the rise of Nazism) is not race but class structure under the organization of capitalism, and over-more, because your analysis ignores class altogether it conveniently also ignores the universality of guilt over global capital and American imperialism that accrues to us all, as we are, Americans all, implicated in the industrial and postindustrial capitalist exploitation of the Earth. African Americans in greater and greater numbers have participated in global corporate ideology, values, exploitation, theft of the labor and fruits of Africa, Asia, India, and Latin America, and have participated in genocidal, illegal, and inhumane wars against the poor and the powerless of the Earth from the period after Emancipation and our participating in wars against Native American nations, to our participation in imperialist wars in Korea to Vietnam, to Nicaragua, to Grenada, to Afghanistan, to Iraq.
African Americans have sought and still seek American identity in its most negative capitalist form—consumerism and materialism; we revel in American ‘success’, and idolize African American political criminals guilty of crimes against humanity (Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice), corrupt politicians (Kwami Kilpatrick, Marion Barry) mediocre and homophobic, misogynist, and misanthropic celebrities and freebooters (Jay Z, Steve Harvey, Creflo Dollar, Beyonce Knowells) for little more reason than because they are ‘rich’ and ‘famous’ examples of the triumph of the same capitalism that enslaved us and brought us forcefully to these shores in the first place.
The hypocrisy comes from assuming that because we fetishize ‘race’ we therefore are free to throw stones as Anglos as if the racial fantasy we hold tight to were not made of brittle, breakable glass.
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I have spent about the last thirty minutes reading a majority of these post. I have to say I think Thad is right on! Here is the simple question you have to ask your selves. First off we can all surely now agree that there is no way in hell to actually know whether african slavery was better/worse that american or european slavery. If you all cant at least agree with that then it is hopeless arguement. So lets say everyone on here despite there opinions can agree with the statement all slavery was equal in terms of cruelty back then and there is no way of knowing otherwise. So if blacks were inslaved by americans, europeans, chineses, arabs, and even yes even other blacks why is it that that out of every race white americans continue to catch most of the shit for it. If african americans want to stll hold a grudge how come they do not hold a grudge against every other race who enslaved them even there own just as much as they do white americans? How come blacks in america are not just as mad at other blacks in america? Say you have two black men, John and steve. Johns ancestors in africa owned slaves, the slaves that they owned just so happened to be steves ancesotrs. Do you think that John would deem steve as a rascists just as much as a white american? Of course not. How is this even remotely fair when both parties were wrong in owning slaves? If there is anyone who can tell me this intelligently I would love to hear your opinion. Why is it not just as equally bad for balcks to have owned slaves as whites?
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I haven’t heard any blacks blame whites for anything,that must be your white guilty conscience. American racial plantation chattel slavery caused a big problem with American whites,slaveowners and non slave owners,viewing blacks as “inferior” to them.That led to white lawmakers,slaveowners and non slaveowners,coming up with segregation,other whites whether slaveowners or not formed ku klux klan organizations,and other whites discriminated against blacks in housing which led to blacks being forced into redlined housing areas whereas whites got to live in the suburbs.American racial plantation chattel slavery was not just about slavery.
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@RJ You must live under a rock then black people play the race card all the time, and use slavery frequently. Also you mentioned the klu klux klan, so where is your mention of the black panthers? My question was still not answered though. Can anyone at all on this post please give me the answer to my question? Why is it deemed worse for white americans to have owned slaves, than black africans? And if you say it is not, they are both equally bad, then it is time for africans americans to shut the hell up about it and move on with there lives. If you feel that there is still anger to be had, then you must be angry about every single race on the face of the4 earth that ever enslaved your ancestors, and that includes people of your own color!
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@ Rebels11 You must have a rock for a head.If you’ve read my post I told you why American racial plantation chattel slavery is one of the if not the most infamous examples of slavery in human history.It was far and away different from slavery that went on before in Africa,Europe,and Asia,in that is was based on pure greed and exploitation which then led to ideas of race because of the stereotypes formed about blacks when white slavers insisted on blacks being best for plantation labor,whereas forms of slavery in Africa,Europe,and Asia was either two countries getting in to a war and the winners taking the losing survivors in and absorbing them,or one country attacking another in an effort of expansion and conquering them ,like in Rome,or someone in their own society owing someone else a debt and unable to pay,having to work it off or someone in their own society being convicted of a crime and sentenced to community service,which is still in the United States today.
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As for the Black Panthers /Ku Klux Klan groups,again that’s two different things.The Black Panthers were formed to help blacks uplift themselves in their redlined blockbusted areas due to housing discrimination (which is a legacy of the racism that many whites,slaveowners and non slaveowners alike,formed about the supposed “inferiority” of blacks due to the stereotype of blacks as slaves when white plantation owners settled on blacks because they felt that blacks were better suited for plantation labor).The Black Panthers were even helped by some whites.The Ku Klux Klan was formed by whites who took it upon themselves to try to keep blacks in a position of inferiority to whites when slavery was abolished and they used imtimidation and violence to try to meet this aim.
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hey so then when did the africans come to american
@somebody who knows
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or is this just a big debate so no question will be answered
about who is just right or wrong
or is this just info from the internet or a book you study
about geological things in the past
or is this just a place to chat with people
about your own opinions about this story
but then i need this info
for maybe the biggest question know to man kind
that not alot know how to answer
you have been givin but not recievin but never livin in the givin understanding so why are these people are not givin the answer im supposed to be recivin by the time i take my test on geolgical solution of the membrain but never understand the true meaning of answering this text givin so thx for helpin
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You cry baby son of a bitch. I guess in turn your purpose is to show that whites are terrible people who should be on there hands and knees apologizing for what there great great great great grandfather’s did. I have always thought of everyone as equal but if I have to listen to anymore bullshit about how blacks were made to be kings and queens I think I will throwup all over my FILA kicks. If your father killed mine should you be held responsible? Dumb Ass! What the hell is your point anyways? Its people like you that will spark another civil war. Except this time whites will be fighting for themselves and not for your freedom. You have blocked out every supposed excuse a white person could have for slavery so how about blocking out every excuse your people could have for not being successful. I must ask god for forgiveness on this one because I simply can’t tolerate people such as yourself. I have an idea you be black I will be white and we will all shut the hell up about it. You are no more entitled to anything than I am yet my generation of whites wait in line so your people can get what’s owed to them. Bullshit!
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I want to add the comment about your people and success is not directed at all African Americans just the ones who use it as a crutch. The fact is in this current times blacks have as many if not more opportunities than whites. You got what you wanted short of extermination so shut the hell up already. You must like it here or you would have jumped on the first flight home to your old country were the only question is short sleeve or long sleeve. See blood diamond. So stop your damn crying. Those who sinned will answer to the lord above. Now live your life and enjoy the great things it has to offer. You were talking about what we find acceptable from our kids and I have one for you. I am always telling my son to drop it when he won’t stop running that mouth. You sir should heave that advice. Drop it! Love to here your response and I mean that not in a smartass way.
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Also seen your little picture on instant brown brightening cream. Funny isn’t it? Riddle me this how many black people have you seen born with straight blond hair and blue eyes? Yet I see so many of them these days and think nothing of it. Smart as you seem it behooves us all to continue to seek education. You will see what you wanna see and ignore the facts the first fault of a pure racist. God bless you my friend.
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WTF ,Wilde, how about just getting black people to equal conditions that whites have had since 1776 ? I mean, in my lifetime, as a white person, Ive seen Jim Crow laws and the fight to eliminate them, anti micegenation laws, white flight and ghettos in northern cities created by realters coluding with government officials, police brutality directed at minorities, discriminitory hiring practices…
You are god dam real , we need laws on the books to get racist whites to give up their hoarded power, because they wouldnt give it up even when they are a cold dead corpse….and that is weak thinking on racist whites part…racist whites are holding the country back…they are the weak link in the chain in the USA….
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B. R.
Racist (i.e. non-Jewish, non-Muslim) whites may be deserving of everything that is coming to them, but the tasty lard is found with the Jews and Muslims, white or not white. As a practical matter, you can get their hoarded power by offering their women a place as harem concubine, and promising to raise their children as full Blacks.
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What racist shite this is. It makes me cry, literally, but then everything does. I can’t help but look around me and see that humans can be bastards. Regardless of the colour of their skin. Yes black people had slaves. Yes white people had slaves. Both are guilty. I’m not ignoring the fact that racism occurs but it occurs on both sides. There are places in the world it wouldn’t be safe for me to go to because I’m white. I’m not even fucking white; I’m peach. I have colour.
What I’m sick of and can’t understand is that because the colour of my skin is white; I should be held accountable for what other people with the same coloured skin have done, even if they could of been a distant relative. It’s nothing to do with me. If I were to kill someone today that doesn’t make my distant grandchild a murderer.
I don’t think I’m better than anyone else because I’m white. I’d help anyone I could because they are a person. I would dislike anyone who tries to hurt anyone. I hate referring to white people as us and black people or any other race as them. We are all people goddammit. I’m not proud to be white. I’m proud to be me. No matter what colour I was.
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Wilde addressed Abagond and mentioned “African Americans” (the ones who use it as a crutch , in his words)…I only was addressing that….”white Americans” can mean a lot of differant type of people
Ive chimed in a lot about the “Arab slave trade” and its affect on black Africans south of the Sahara…at the same time , saying the Atlantic slave trade was even more brutal (both were extremly brutal)
I dont understand everything you said …but Ive mentioned harems before
In the end, the meaning of this thread is, white racists shouldnt use the argument “Africans sold their own slaves” to diminish in any way, the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade and how its legacy affects in a big way, all the countries in the Americas that brought slaves from Africa
White Americans coming to grips with this is extremly important, and , I cant expect a black American to be able to just trust a white American who doesnt ackowledge that…..white Americans need to be strong about that, and face it, not be weak…the weak ones are holding us all hostage and preventing us from going forward
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@Jonathan Wilde:
All liqored up and no place to go! Tell me, why do you white racists get drunk and come to blogs such as this to spew your delusionsÉ If nothing else, you are hilarious! Folks, this is what happens when you drink, smoke spliffs and ingest methamphetamines simultaneously! Do not imbibe and type! Try not to drink and type sir! Good day!
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@Emily:
It makes me cry, literally, but then everything does.
Maybe you should peruse this post:
It’s right up your alley!
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Herneith: Apart from the fact I cry a lot (due to mental health issues/though in your eyes because I’m weak due to my race) I don’t understand how that possibly relates to me. Also that’s very offensive. I’m a person, not just a white woman. I’m also not American.
None of those things in that article apply to me. Also this one especially,
“White solidarity: whites are afraid to stand up against racism, particularly when they are with other whites. Also, they do not like it when you call other whites racists – they seem to take it personally for some reason.”
I have had fights with people about their comments and have no longer associated with people due to the fact they have been disgusting racists. I have no time for people like that and I’m not some weak white woman who just crys to look innocent. I cry for the injustices in the world and have an inability to control my emotions.
Also damn right I’m going to take it personally if my skin colour is white and I get lumped in with everyone else with the “same skin colour”. Saying all crying white woman are pathetic racists is just as bad as saying all black people are from the ghetto and commit crimes. They are just ridiculous stereotypes.
I’ve never judged anyone because of their skin colour and now that very thing is happening to me.
I don’t understand why some people are so obtuse.
Most people in our generations, black and white have no idea what it is to be a slave or a slaver. Stop holding grudges for our ancestors mistakes.
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@Emily:
Put it to music and play it on the violin. I could not care less as to how you feel. That song Cry me a River comes to mind. As for that article, it describes you and your colour-blind racist ilk to a tee. You must be Canadian! You read like one of those white Canadians.
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The institution of American race based plantation chattel slavery was terrible but contrary to what alot of white people believe,it was not,by itself,the only bad thing in American race relations. The perceptions that many whites,slaveowners and non slaveowners alike, formed about blacks as “inferior” that led to all of the segregation that happened after slavery ended still continues today.
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I’m not Canadian. Ok Herneith. Think what you will. I wasn’t asking you to care about my feelings. You seem to have taken a disliking to me because I’m a white woman and you call me the racist. It’s clear that nothing will change your mind. It’d be futile carrying on a discussion.
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http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/slavetra.html
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Let’s act mature here.
1. Regardless of what you want to pretend to think happened, here is what happen.
Africa, ivory coast anyways, wasn’t split into countries we think of today, but rather a collection of tribes and petty kingdoms, similar to ancient germania and the steppes. Tribes and petty kingdoms go to war with one another for a multitude of reasons. Usually for the goal of land gain. When one tribe is victorious they usually enslave the defeated populace. Now the Spanish, whom recently lose their conquered peoples populace to deseases, come, originally already trading for ivory, and offer guns for ‘servants’. The victorious tribe accepts because 1. Guns were highly valued back then, when everyone else is using traditional warefare and ur now the guy with firearms, its changes the tide of any war dramatically. 2. Your foe is now unable to exact any revenge for u enslaving their tribe, killing their father, ect. (You eliminated your greatest interior threat) 3. Less mouths to feed, and more land for food, that is a glorious relief for any faction or civilization.
The French did similar the same thing to the Cathars. The Romans to everyone they invaded, Egypt, Persia, Japan, China, Maya, I think the Inca.
2. Now let’s look at the Spanish, the only other power, that actively used slaves, at the time was the Ottoman Empire. The Spanish basically copied the ideas of slavery from the Ottomans, who built upon the Byzantines, who built upon earlier forms. It just got progressively worse as time went on, to the point of today’s child slavery in S America, and Japan’s treatement of war prisoners.
BTW I’m a Celt, we were enslaved and our sister cultures were driven into extinction because of shit like this. (The continental celts were) so come at me racists.
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BTW, by petty kingdom I mean a kingdom that would eventually decline and cease to exist de facto. And become forgotten to common knowledge people. European Examples would be Courland, Burgundy, Gotland, and Thrace. Asian Equivelents would be Toga(? I think that was the name of it, it was eventually annexed by the Russian Empire) All the successive kingdoms in Siberia after the Yaun Dynasty, Kyoto, the Amniese kingdoms.
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Also it wasn’t just one tribe/kingdom that took bribes from whites to get guns so everyone else would not have guns, most kingdoms that did also had enemy kingdoms nearby that also traded with whites that the whites also supplied guns to. Ashantes and Fantes, Bakongos and Loangs,Foulta Jallons and Dyallas,Dahomeyans and Oyos,etc. It is also ignored or unknown by most people that white slave traders also had a slave trade in colonial America with Native Americans that was very similar to the transatlantic slave trade. I believe white traders even also had a slave trade with Indonesia!
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The reason why people talk about this is becuase of internalized guilt conservative whites (whites that don’t like blacks) have about the centuries of white supremacy in America. By them selecting facts and overemphasizing,that’s their way of trying to absolve guilt. If conservative whites had more problems with Native Americans like blacks,they would be overhyping things like Native Americans “selling ther own people to whites” and they would overhype that when white soldiers got into wars with various Native American tribes aka nations,they had help from the tribes enemies. Because some whites had help from enemy tribes,they’d say, “Native Americans sold Native American land to whites”. This has a lot less to do with “telling the truth about history” and a whole lot more to do with absolving guilt .
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It wasn’t one kingdom, but many, some willing to go with extremes to rid yourself of your rivals. It happened in post roman Europe, it happened in papau new guinea, patagonia, indochina, mongolia, and western Africa was no different. With the collapse of songhai you have many people trying to gain power. And willing to take imense extremes. Selling your captured rivals to traders from a land afar is a great opertunity to make sure you will never see them again. And I think you are being a bit abusive with the term white, white applies to all euros, from the celts and basque, to the slavs, germanics, latins, balkans, ect. The ‘whites’ that were responsible for slave trade, were the germanics, the Anglos(English, Saxon, Norman, the germanic cultures present in Britannia), Frankish(French and sister cultures), Visigothic & Iberian (Northern Spain and Portugal), and Lombardic(Italian and sister cultures), and Germans(German, swiss, Rhine, ect.). All though I’m not dennying there may have been some bribes by very persistant merchants, I’m very certain that, to obtain gunpower, many local leaders were willing to trade captives and enemy villages for that advantage. Greed makes us do crazy things.much of the trade that happened was in wlling agreement of both parties. Meaning the event was of two greedy people willing to do the trade. The merchants needed people to build sugar plantations, and the local warlords needed guns for their armies. And so a trade was made. You can sugar coat it all you want, but by the end of the day the trade was made by individuals willing to go that far as to get what they want. I can’t see why any racist germanics would feel any guilt, if they truly hate blacks, then they wouldn’t try to cover any guilt. Because in order for them to hate, they won’t give a f**k enough to cover themselves they way you theorize they do. It’s just illogical. Contradicting if you will. And also, at the same time, ironic, for while you are generalizing these ‘whites’ as hating ‘blacks’, so at the same time, you yourself, are being rather racist.
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And also the enslavement of the native populations by the Spanish, is partly why Europeans needed slaves, the new diseases to the Americas all but wiped out the native populace. If those diseases never wiped out the populace, then the transatlantic slave trade either wouldn’t of happened or just be a rare thing.
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“That part of their past makes White Americans uncomfortable. But instead of facing up to it, they have built up defences against it”
You go on to say that all whites think they are supreme and don’t want to take blame of the acts they committed.
Many Americans, Caucasian or otherwise, came to American after slavery was abolished. So what do they face up to? I’m sure you could trace back to some ancestor who owned slaves somewhere but you could do that with anyone of any race. The fact is that those families didn’t participate in the cruelty of American slavery.
These white americans are trying to defend themselves with these arguments (yes, some are weak arguments) because they are being blamed or held responsible, by some opinions, for the cruelty of someone else’s ancestor. Consider a group of African Americans who are in a gang whose crimes count murder and rape. Should all black people be responsible for their crimes. What about the sons and daughters of those gang members? I’m sure this isn’t hard to imaging since such people exist who do these crimes and indeed stereotyping black people as thugs exists as well. So why should we stereotype all white people as slave owners or the sons and daughters of slave owners?
With that said, one could still argue that much of “white” fortune has come from “black” misfortune (misfortune being too light a word). Therefore some balance could still be strived for, however, blatantly blaming all white people for sins of someone else’s father is wrong in my opinion.
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Get real man. Nobody is blaming anyone for slavery today or any other bad thing. However,even though many whites came to America after slavery was abolished,and even though most whites didn’t own plantations,it can be said that the plantation economy did help America become prosperous to attract even more whites to come. Also there were a lot of whites that didn’t have any problems with the “whites only” segregation that came as a result of whites thinking they were superior to blacks.
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@ John Gray
I never said “all whites”. You are saying that. I do not talk like that.
“My ancestors never owned slaves” is another argument like this one:
What these and other arguments about slavery have in common (“Get over it”, “Go back to Africa”, etc) is moral blindness, which point to a sense of guilt:
Someone who does not feel guilty does not make these half-assed excuses for it. In fact, they would never dream of defending it. Why in the world would they?
Whites feel guilty about slavery because they know deep down that they benefit from it. They know that the present-day inequality between blacks and whites is rooted in slavery. Their guilty conscience is such that THEY are the ones who bring up slavery most of the time, not blacks.
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Suggest you read the info from the below website – based on written history gleaned from old documents from Harvard and many other universities.
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/slavetra.html
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The link that Mike provided is a quite biased account of history. For one think it purports that the Slave trade within Africa was worse than what Europeans did. Whether it was or not, it can in no way excuse the Atlantic Slave Trave (which was a European activity). And whether it flourished within Africa or not does not excuse what Europeans did.
Some other things I noticed on this site:
– US Exceptionalism (WOW, this site is soaked in it)
– plays down US imperialism (certainly not how non-Americans see the USA)
– Focuses on Technology (reminds of how the Smithsonian changed the name of the Museum of History and Technology to the Museum of American History) which attempts to put the USA on the top of the wave of history
– ignores racism as one of USA’s current problems (yet points out that homosexuality is still a current problem). I see racism as the elephant in the room that no one talks about, and this site owner doesn’t talk about it either.
– skips over the Native American genocide
It is a site that attempts to make Americans, particularly white Americans, proud and nationalistic about their country. Looking at it, I feel something amiss just like when I was reading my history textbook in High School.
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Move o! Its over
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What???? Are we still spinning around the sprocket of these lame myths? I thought I and others had settled this months ago? Are Americans of a scant consciousness such that it requires constant repeating to help them remember anything? Here goes again:
How sad and insufficient (because lacking truly valid economic analysis) these responses to Abagond all are, even the best of them.
It seems that only Thaddeus took up any real attempt at addressing capitalism at all, and he’s totally wrong headed about it nevertheless. Abagond would have been better served if he had followed up his basically correct and insightful observations about the unprecedented SIZE, and SCOPE of the Corporate Transatlantic Slave Trade if he had written also about the enormous ORGANIZATION and GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION of world economics that resulted from it, namely, the murder of post-feudal mercantilism and the replacement of that fundamentally more humanist, liberatory, and progressive form of market economics with a comparatively evil and aggressive form that at its inception took undeterred greed as its forte rather than free market development. So far most of the responses are longer than Abagond’s original post, so to be fair to him, he didn’t post anything meant to be exhaustive.
You are wrong-headed Thaddeus about several claims you press here. Just to take two of the most egregious, you are wrong first of all to say that Africans are being presented by Abagond as somehow ‘not as bad’ as Europeans. You set up a straw man with Abagond’s point for your own convenience with that distortion of his argument.
He is precisely arguing, by the implication of his quite lucid argument, that Europeans are NOT ‘bad’; there IS no ‘bad’ or ‘good’ or ‘better African slavery’ or ‘worse European slavery’ in Abagond’s analysis. He (or she, I’m not certain) is doing an ECONOMIC and MATERIAL analysis not of ‘slavery’ (which you accurately point out is universal, and was African, Roman, Greek, Persian, Asian, and as far as we know, even Neanderthal), but of the Corporate Transatlantic Slave Trade, and it’s transformation of global human culture, a detrimental transformation, I myself would add, and one whose pernicious influence on human development has lasted for four hundred years. The invention of ‘race’ is only one of the results of this pernicious influence. You are wrong in your noodling reflections to the effect of racism being just another extension of demonized ‘otherness’ and thus concluding that the racism of the slave trade was coextensive with the ‘otherness’ of African cultures that practiced taking slaves. ‘African Otherness’ did not found the largest, longest, and most globally distorting force in human history—corporate capitalism, which is second in implication and scope only to WAR itself as a human activity that has dictated the flawed course of the human race and the human condition.
Which leads to your second major fallacy: that capitalism (as you wrongly claim about the corporate slavery that was the Transatlantic Trade) was trans-cultural, or trans-human, emerging with some degree of simultaneity or perhaps of equivalency. This idea of The Trade and all its attendant ills (national-to-global expropriation as an industry, industrialized genocide, of the Taino, the Arawak, and the Caribe peoples of the New World, for example, and eventual global colonialism that contributed to Europe’s primitive accumulation) is patently false, and CANNOT in fact be true given the nature and origin of capitalism. For instance, prior to The Global Trade, human history offered up three ways one would become a slave:
1. Due to losing a war;
2. As the result of a debt, and
3. Fiat (the whim of some king, Pope, Duke, Chieftain, warlord, or Khan). As respondents here mention, every culture throughout time has practiced slavery.
However, the difference that The Trade introduced was the mechanization, mass-quantification, and industrialization leading to globalized profit that provided primitive accumulation and world dominance not for Africans, or Arabs, (or even Europeans!), but for the companies that began by trading tea, evolved into wretched traders of human flesh, and ended in the power to invade and oppress Africa, Asia, and India (while they retarded and distorted the development even of Europe!)
Like many of the fallacy laden thinkers Abagond is aiming at, you are describing MERCANTILISM and MARKET ECONOMY when you talk of cultural equivalencies, but the subject is not market economy, it is corporate capitalism. Corporations were born as a result of the Transatlantic Trade, not the other way around. Early Capitalism as a true market theory of economics existed approximately fifty years after the end of market economics driven mercantilism before Early Capitalism too, was eviscerated by the hegemony of the charter corpus-company. Early capitalism was transformed into something that, ironically, strove against markets, against market development, exchange, diversity, competition, individual freedom, and against all the innovations we associate with FREE markets that had been characteristic of mercantilism’s own most profound impact on human development: the weakening of monarchy, the end of feudalism, the freeing of human innovation, and the empowerment of Europe’s most significant contribution to world culture, as incipiently expressed by the political innovation of Ancient Athenian democracy: individualism and human rights.
You see, Thaddeus, what you totally miss is that you are shouting inside a much, much bigger box than you seem to know, which is why you fail to appreciate what Abagond’s greater, larger argument is: ‘Africans’ did not sell themselves into the TRIANGLE SLAVE TRADE and neither did Arabs sell them into it, since the slave trade was corporate, not cultural.
Profits were corporate, not national (neither Africa, nor Europe had any true ‘national’ identity, and the early corporations strove to keep it that way and to keep both populations divided and underdeveloped for the sake of power, control, and profit). Simply put, it was not “Europe” or “Whites” that or who were responsible for The Trade, since the corporations born out of The Trade were not acting in the name of Europe, or Europeans, but in unison with Europeans’ enemies: The Catholic Church, the monarchs, and the landed, hereditary gentry, all of whom had been placed at RISK of EXTINCTION by actual capitalism-mercantilism and by the invention of Guttenberg’s western version of the Asian printing press and the advance of literacy following The Bubonic Plague and feudal barbarism.
The Slave Trade was about economics, not ‘race.’ ‘Race’ is a myth anyway, as French philosopher Roland Barthes has argued. Race itself is a red herring, and was used as such BY the embryonic corporations, (Dutch East India and British East India companies among them—the same companies whose anti-market control, pseudo-military domination, and political totalitarianism via their monopolies and charter powers granted by monarchs, provoked the American colonists to rebel against England). That same despotism, supported by The Church, the kings, and the Old Dispensation of ruling classes, also led, with their support, to two hundred years of rape and expropriation of natural resources from Africa, India, and Asia–the crimes of colonialism.
The primitive accumulation (see Marx’s writings if you don’t know what PA is–or read John Maynard Keynes for frack’s sake) that these companies and the enabling ruling classes of the European nations achieved through slave labor on a global scale, is what provided the seed money for the eventual creation of a global European (as in corporate) supremacy—‘White’ supremacy, if you wish.
Thaddeus, you have taken one step back from the midst of those whom Abagond accuses of fallacious thinking, but you are merely committing the exact same fallacies from a mere few steps remove—you are just as wrong as those Abagond (successfully) refutes. For one who promotes books, maybe you ought to read a few more of them. Reading is fundamental. Try “From Columbus to Castro” by Eric Williams for a start. Than try “The Influence of Oversea Expansion on England to 1700” by J.E. Gillespie. Try also, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney and follow that up with “How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America,” by Dr. Manning Marable, for some economic understanding of why ‘race’ is not the force behind so-called ‘white’ supremacy— capitalism is.
Race is merely a McGuffin.
-Prof Ray Waller January 2013, Wayne State University, Detroit
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You know regardless of who was doing it was wrong. What isn’t mentioned is all of the Europeans (Irish, Scottish Greeks Italians etc) had people that were sold as indentured servants (which is a form of slavery. The intent was to “pay off their debt” however they were never able to pay down that debt because the “wages” they earned didn’t cover the cost of the food and shelter they were charged for.) Similar to the way the Latinos were treated in the farming industry in California.
I want to share some of my “racist” experiences as a white female coming to age in the 70s in America. I will make my overriding points at the end of my post.
My grandmother emigrated here from Greece. She got work in a factory. She was taken in the bathroom and stripped down because they wanted to see if she was the “same” as them. My other grandparents had a cross burned on the lawn because we were “furiners”.
I went to high school with the riot squad in the halls because of the Klan/militant black race “war”. The black girls had a list of all the white girls they didn’t like and were attacking them in the bathrooms and cutting off all their hair. I made the list because I was one of the few white girls that didn’t take crap off them or anyone else and wasn’t afraid of them. They found that out when six of them jumped me and I took out 3 of them before the other 3 ran. They never bothered me again and gave me a wide swath in the hallways.
I lived in Ohio and drove from Cincinnati to Dayton on the back roads as we had done for years. I stopped at a McDonalds to get some food. The place was packed and I was the only white person there. The background noise started to grow louder and I heard someone say lets get that white bitch. All I wanted was a Big Mac and fries. The gentlemen in front of me, behind me and besides me all turned to me and said you aren’t safe here, you should leave. They escorted me to my car with 30 people yelling and screaming at me and throwing milkshakes and food at me. If they hadn’t done the “RIGHT” thing I would have probably ended up like Reginald Denny in the LA Riots.
By the way, I am a full-blooded Greek whose Grandparents on both sides emigrated here from Greece in the late 1890s. We have traced our lineage back hundreds of years. WE DID NOT EVER OWN SLAVES. I am not a Greek American.. I am an American of Greek Heritage.I never called anyone a nigger, I have never been on the offensive side, only the defensive. I have had close black friends all of my life. One of my very best friends is a black male who comes from the Bronx. During the 70s black kids wore shirts that said “Judge me by the content of my character, not the color of my skin.” Martin Luther King. I believe that whether they will admit it or not, most Black people in America are inherently racist and judge white people by the color of their skin, not their character.
My points:
1. You can’t blame YOUR choices in life on the color of my skin.
2. Racism is derived from ignorance and fear of the unknown.
3. Racism is and will always be about the haves, who want to keep it and the have nots that want it. It is and has always been about money.
4. Don’t stereotype me based on the color of my skin
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@ Renee
You say, “Don’t stereotype me based on the color of my skin,” but I can’t figure out who is doing that? You just have a guilty conscious IMO.
You also say “most Black people in America are inherently racist and judge white people by the color of their skin, not their character” but I can’t find any evidence to prove that. But there’s PLENTY of evidence that white people judge blacks by the color of their skin…
You also missed/ignored Abagond’s comment about the “My ancestors never owned slaves” argument:
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Hi there to every one, it’s genuinely a fastidious for me to pay a quick visit this web page, it contains important Information.
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I think the get over it defense is pretty valid. Your main point seems to be face up to it… well how?! Every white American knows about it, and has been made to feel ashamed about it. This all happened before any of us were born, and 99% of white Americans follow the rules to not offend African Americans. It’s just so tiring. I can probably trace my heritage back to Europe faster than most to Africa, and I was born here whether I wanted to be or not. I’m not going to make people call me a European American though. Why can’t we just all be Americans? It is horrible what happened, but I think most people would take their chances here as opposed to Africa right now… so WHAT DO YOU WANT? If you want the money they made from slavery, you’re going to have to talk to the white people in the south that weren’t ruined by the civil war and great depression. It feels like racism the other way around at this point. You can feel however you want, and we walk on egg shells because we are white. Africans can sell Africans because they were enemies and it would be hard to trace back, but my skin is white so I’m an easy to prove enemy of Africans. I don’t feel that I judge anyone based on their race, but I’m just so tired of this being perpetuated. Neither you nor I had anything to do with these issues; so why can’t we be truly equal Americans at this point? This question is up to African Americans at this point, because most white people I’m sure want equality so we can stop worrying about the rules and feeling guilty. This article admits that both of our ancestors sold slaves; so you can really make the argument that you would do anything different no matter what your color is. We are all Americans and our country has much larger problems. I’m sorry that white people in America had slaves, but that’s all I can do for you. This is me… never having been a racist… never will be a racist… but at the same time… this is me being done with this issue.
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So…we just ignore history in favor of PC. Great. White people are horrible and we are atrocious human beings. I am so glad that I forced the tribal leaders in Africa to sell their worst folks to global traders who in turn brought them to America. I am ashamed that the ones deemed unworthy for their tribes were sold to us. I am so glad the tribal leaders made their money off getting rid of the ones who didn’t provide. (if only we could do that again in America, not just the blacks). White privilege is a lie, racism still occurs; but this is not 1950, blacks need to get over it. I’m Jewish and I don’t send letters to Angela Merkel. If blacks think they had it bad, read world history as it pertains to the Jews.
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Oh yeah, Brandon, Africans forced whites to come to Africa and start a gun trade cycle among enemy tribes to get them to agree to provide them with what they wanted, at first gold and spices then kidnap victims. Africans forced whites to do the same things with other races like Native Americans and Asians. Africans forced white planters to phase out multi racial labor and only focus on blacks. Africans forced white planters to keep blacks as permanent chattel slaves. Africans forced white non planters to buy plantation products. Africans forced whites in Europe to come to America because of the opportunities and freedoms afforded whites based in part on the plantation system helping the economy.Africans forced whites to view blacks as inferior and to pass laws against blacks. Africans forced whites like your self to have stereotyped close minded views of blacks to make yourself feel superior. Africans forced whites to view blacks, a race they considered “inferior”, as competition for jobs. Africans forced whites to have segregation. Africans forced whites to flee their neighborhoods at the sight of one black person. Africans forced whites to redline black housing areas. Africans forced whites like your self to try to select and overemphasize your facts about what happened in the very beginning to try to absolve your racial views. Africans forced you to be a racist Brandon,you need to get over yourself.
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Do people really think that we got the cream of the crop of black people?
On the contrary I think we go the slow ones(easily caught) the dumb ones
the really bad criminal ones and only through selective breeding practices were we able to produce the big, strong and fast brutes that we have to deal with today. I think if our founding fathers knew how much trouble they were to become to our society they would have picked their own cotton.
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Rick Miller,
So you’re saying if you did get the “cream of the crop”, life would’ve been a lot easier for you?
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@ Rick Miller
You are just supposing. But it is a matter of historical fact that Britain opened its prisons and sent its criminals to America (and later Australia):
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Abagond,
Telling real history to white people (assuming Rick is white cause he’s definitely whitewashed) is the same as mugging them. You rob them of their comfort zone. lol
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this is not all true. Africans didn’t sell their people into slavery. this is what the white men, said, taught and brainwash us with. some may have traded. and there might have been a few sell outs here and there.. but get it right and stop doing research out of white men books. it wasn’t on no large scale for them to lable as a business. they where thieves everywhere they went. they respect no one. they were barbarans okay. did the native amercan sold their people too. did the arawaks and etc. sell there people. hello.
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Isn’t it racist for black people to believe they wouldn’t have done the same thing if the roles had been reversed hundreds of years ago. Isn’t it racist to believe you are somehow morally better than white people and blaming a race instead of humanity for Slavery? Slavery is something that HUMANS did and it is not race specific. As long as Black people keep pulling the race/slavery card there will always be a divide between the races and you will be causing it.
So here is the question. Do black people believe their race is morally superior to white people ? And if they don’t believe that why blame the slavery on a race instead of the zeitgeist of humanity at the time?
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@ origineelnl
The trouble with white people like yourself is not that you were born bad but that your thinking is morally broken. For example, just because slavery is common in human history, that does not mean white people should be given a pass on it. That would be like telling your wife to disregard your unfaithfulness because many men cheat on their wives.
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Actually slavery is still going on today. There was a recent case of an Arab woman IN THE US who was arrested for keeping a Filipino maid in virtual slavery – no wages, confiscated her passport, beat her, etc. Thank God the girl was able to escape and clued the police in that there were 2 other girls being held. In the Arab world, there are still workers (maids, camel boys, etc.) from sub-Sahara Africa, the Phillipines, Pakistan, India, etc. There is also sex trafficking of girls, white, Mestizo, black, etc. Instead of focusing on historic slavery why not spend more energy fighting against modern day slavery? I’m not saying that what happened to black Americans who were enslaved isn’t absolutely awful – it was. But I’m more concerned about stuff I read about today, like the people shooting at blacks during Katrina (WTF??) and the kids held in slavery today.
I am a Christian and I believe we are all children of God. That means I am angry if ANYONE of ANY RACE is enslaved, abused, treated unjustly. However, I only have a small amount of time and energy, relatively speaking. So I have to figure out the best way to use that – and I think it’s more constructive and productive to try to focus on the present, and making the world today better, than to look back at the past. That’s just MY perspective.
I also don’t think whites are necessarily trying to make excuses (some might, but not all of them) when they point out that Arabs were slave traders, blacks held slaves, etc. All of it is true and it doesn’t excuse the European slave trade. HOWEVER, it IS true that white Americans died to the tune of 600,000 young men to end slavery in this country. None of that would have been necessary if people hadn’t stuck with the true intent of the founding fathers who said “all men are created equal”, not “all white men are created equal”. And, as a woman, I wish it had said “all people are created equal”.
For myself, I’m of Asian descent, and my family immigrated to his county in the 1970s. So if there are reparations, etc., then it would be unfair for me to be subject to it. However, my ancestors WERE partially responsible for the horrible caste system in India in the sense that they lived under it and not until my grandfather under Gandhi did they fight to change it. In the same way, whites who accepted slavery without speaking out against it were responsible, even if they didn’t own slaves. But I still am against reparations. I don’t think that’s a productive way to deal with the situation.
I think a better way is for all of us to continue to speak out logically, rationally and calmly any time we see injustice. I try myself to be color blind when I deal with people. Even though whites have discriminated against me, I try not to discriminate against them. I try to be a better example to them. And, also, while some whites have discriminated against me, most of the ones I know have not, as far as I can tell. Same with blacks. My Mom had a young black man try to snatch her purse – but that doesn’t mean all blacks or even all young black men are bad people. There is a young black man who works at the grocery store my Mom shops at and they chat every time she goes in. He’s respectful, smart and hard working. So it would be wrong to stigmatize him, and she doesn’t. Similarly, while I have known whites who are incredibly racist, I’ve also known far many more who were decent people.
I do think blacks deal with the worst brunt of racism in this country and that’s just a fact. I think the solutions though are to focus on developing a strong community where fathers help raise their children and blacks support their churches and black-owned businesses, etc. I think the best “revenge” is to live well.
BTW, I am not black and so I don’t know just how bad it is to be black. I know that. But I have experienced racism – I’ve had people make assumptions about me that were insulting because of my race and I’ve had people shout out at me “nigger” while I was in the deep South (twice). And that hurt. So I can’t imagine how that must hurt blacks. I think it is much harder for blacks to forgive, etc., because there is more to forgive. But as a Christian – I think that is the right thing to do. One of the kindest, most decent Christian ladies I knew as an old black lady who lived in a village in South Carolina, and she exemplified the love of Christ. She is my grandmother in Christ. It hurt me deeply that anyone could treat her with other than love and respect. But, she responded in a Christian manner. I think in the long run, that earns the respect of others. It’s the lesson of people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, etc. What do you think?
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BTW, one statistic I have seen – black slaves in the Muslim world would have died out if they weren’t “re-stocking” regularly from Africa. But black slaves in the Americas grew in numbers even after they stopped importing new ones. So an argument can be made that blacks were treated better here than in the Arab world. It might be because there were some white slave-owners who weren’t as inhumane, or some who were better “businessmen” and didn’t want to ruin their human capital, or some other reason. None of which changes the fact that slavery was immoral and there really is no defense for even the most “benign” form of slavery.
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Growing in numbers does not mean treated better. As “business owners” white slave-owners bred slaves like cattle, even adding their own children to the herd to expand their property.
Draft animals are bred to perform tasks desired by their owners. It does not mean that they are treated better than those that are not bred (ie, “wild caught”).
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Yes, because no draft animal was ever misused. Then again why did the author of Black Stallion write her book. Wow, I think because of the harsh treatment of many owners. If I hear another draft animal quote to talk about slavery I might just explode. Plus what use does a farmer have for a draft animal that goes lame, or has mental problems, or the mired of other problems that human beings go through. Please think before you make such ignorant comments. Pretty, please, with cherry on top!
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Sorry edit: Black Beauty.
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God ur exactly what’s wrong with this country most of u African Americans cry around about things that took place in the past no one alive in America today is a slave or owns them call Al Sharpton so he can call me a racist… That’s how u guys are just like the whole George Zimmerman thing but let’s not start on that!!! U have ur own magazine, tv channel, and dating website if whites did that it would be racist give me a break u guys are just lazy looking for a free hand out
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@BGuyer
The point is, which you obviously don’t get, is that the racist mentality both white and black folks and inherited from slavery has never gone away,it’s been handed down generation after generation like old clothes and heirlooms.
And white people have always controlled the media and still do, so don’t even start with that, “White people can’t have their own whatever” BS, because it’s not true—especially when white people not only control all 3 of the major networks, and most of the cable channels. so let go of that lame argument about white folks supposedly not being able to do this and that, became black folks are demanding this and that. Hell, we’re hard-working,tax-playing Americans too, and we have the right to raise hell about something that’s wrong if it is.
Another thing—get rid of that BS myth about black folks wanting a “free-hand out” that tired,old and outdated stereotype needs to go. It also ignores the fact that 37% of white people are on welfare,so stop watching/taking talking points from FOX,stop being young and ignorant and recycling old outdated myth about black people and what we do.
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I love watching racist make themselves look even more racist by trying to deny how evil, how atrocious slavery was and how the white man has committed more atrocities against humanity than anyone else. Anytime a person blames the victim or makes excuses for the behavior of the perpetrator they are acting immoral and are exhibiting the behavior of a sociopath. This is the bottom line regarding Blacks selling Blacks, Africans did not sell Africans, the rich and powerful few sold the poor and the imprisoned. The Africans as a whole did not sell their people, thats like saying all Americans are serial killers because we have several serial killers in this country. Only rich black Africans sold prisoners to the whites and 99% of Africans were against such trade but once again the rich controlled the country and once again the rich proved to practice immoral business practices. The old saying that money is the root of evil is so true and this is who sold prisoners to the whites. Lets also not forget that even though the rich blacks sold prisoners to the whites they never told the white men to; beat the slaves, rape the slaves (even girls as young as 10 years old), they never asked them to throw hundreds of thousands of people into the Atlantic ocean because they were sick and may get their other property sick, never told the whites to cut off their feet or hang them or whip them or burn them….Whats your excuse for these actions….Why don’t you tell me how it was a 10 year old girls fault for getting raped by a sweaty, hairy, white slave owner or hired hand…It’s the racist portion of my race that shame me to a white American…own up to it and treat every person in this world as you would want to be treated…stop denying the past and stop telling a race or religious group how to heal or act…A white person can no more begin to know what it is like to be a African American than a squirrel knows what it is like to be a dolphin…so bring yourself back down to Earth with the rest of mankind and…..”lighten up Francis.”
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Slave have always existed. But its only the white people who thought the beating, torture, imprisonment, rape, and murder of their slaves was acceptable. What does that tell you about their mindset? They want to think they are better than this now and that it is not still part of them… Just because now they can hide behind the cover of the government, police, justice system and abuse people with their power and money instead of brute force and violence as they did in slavery times. LOL
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All I know is nobody in my family ever owned a slave nor had the money, prestige, or resources to even think in that manner. It’s an interesting history but it is history. I have yet to meet a single person of any decent in this country who is a slave to anything but their own habits, until then the best of luck to everyone.
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Great post. These are derailment arguments that were listed. Maybe the shame and guilt is just to much and white people want black people to just shut up, and stop bring up the past. When race issues are brought up white commenters will immediately say that this is a race baiting tactic. Or like in the points listed in the thread post use one of many derailment tactics, My family never owned slaves,blacks sold their own people. What I understand about Africans selling other Africans was this was enemies of other tribes. We must never forget, this is apart of our history, America was made rich from the labor of black slaves.
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Also, slavery existed in Africa as well as Europe and Asia, Long before the Atlantic Slave Trade. Slaves in Africa were captives of war,who served as household laborers. African slavery was neither racial nor hereditary. Many times the captors were from kingdoms that were well organized. The captives were usually people who lacked well armed rulers and armies.
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To those of you who are angry that Black people still bring up slavery let me invite you into their world. Now before you get the wrong idea I am white but I was raised in a Biracial family, THANK GOD FOR THAT or I may have ended up like many of my racist arrogant kind. Lets look at the year 1800; slavery was legal and the richest, most educated and safest group or race was the white race. The poorest, most oppressed, most uneducated and unsafe group or race was the black race. Now lets move ahead 213 years and look at these stats again and see if you are right about African Americans being whiners and complaining about the past. 2013; The richest, most educated and safest group or race is the white race. The poorest, most uneducated, oppressed and unsafe group or race is the Black race. Now Einstein does this help you to see that the only thing that has changed for African Americans is that rich whites are no longer allowed to own, hang, torture and rape them but other than something this group of people should have had from the beginning of this country NOTHING HAS CHANGED FOR THEM!…If you lived in this cycle of oppression and fear and detachment from all of the rest of society I guarantee you as whiny and arrogant as you are you would be crying about every time your cable TV goes out…which is about all you have to cry about….Now doesn’t this make you seem completely ignorant and arrogant. Blacks have slavery, murder, torture, poverty, hanging, rape, illiteracy, inequality and no healthcare to complain about…..Whites have; “black people piss me off because they always bring up slavery” to complain about….Congratulations you just defined INEQUALITY if this is how you think.
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Africa is a huge continent so what if some African rulers did enslave others. There were many who didn’t and fought back. I love how it is always said oh we didn’t go chasing and hunting people down. No you didn’t you gave guns to the side that was doing this and breaking down power balances. You, kidnapped some of the rulers of certain kingdoms relatives until you got what you wanted. You might not have done the running but you sure did pimp out your wares to those who did. Then you made a god awful system to hold people down and back.
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The other part of this argument that white Americans conveniently forget is what happened AFTER slavery supposedly ended in the US; that is, what happened as a result of that race-based chattel system. They love to mention that “Africans sold their own people,” thinking that fact alone absolves any whites from wrong-doing. They love to mention that it was hundreds of years ago. But what about Jim Crow? What about the “Black Codes?” What about Rosewood, Tulsa (Greenwood), Seneca Village, and a whole host of other black developments that were “razed” after the Civil War and throughout the 20th Century? What about redlining and discriminatory housing and employment practices? What about sundown towns? What about lynching? What about microaggressions? What about racial profiling? What about the skewed justice system and prison industrial complex? What about the thousands of things folks have done (and continue to do) in order to maintain their status quo in a system of white supremacy?
They love to take credit for their ancestors’ “achievements,” but refuse to see how those “achievements” impacted others, often in a negative way.
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@mel and everyone else who says white slavery wasn’t near as bad as black slavery. http://elliotlakenews.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/yes-virginia-white-slavery-existed/
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Hey Retardedness, your article about rich whites in England enslaving the poor Irish and Scottish has nothing to do with America and again i say look at the inequality today of whites compared to blacks and it is as bad today as it was 160 yrs ago….but I am done with you because I only debate with those that have hope and not those that are full blood Nazis…. http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/27/news/economy/wealth-whites-blacks/index.html
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Reading all these comments are quite interesting since i am american by naturalization. When i first came here i’ll be honest it was the first time i saw black people and i found it pretty cool, then i started finding out about this whole crazy slavery and hate between white and black people. Back then when i was 14 and was recently exposed to all this and had an innocent mind i thought.. white people and black people live in tension and fear with each other even though they act all nice to each other. The white man is scared of saying the wrong thing and the black man expects the white man to say something stupid and when it happens it explodes to a whole nother level.
Seems that as long as that history exists and as long and black community holds tightly so what the white man did like a safety blanket there won’t be a stop to racism, white people should also stop justifying themselves. There should be a quote “lets’ not let our ancestors decide our future and relationship, let’s just love and accept one another” I feel so happy when i see a happy interracial couple that let go of all the negativity and saw themselves are just two people that love each other, no color, no religion.
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This is an interesting article about the African Slave Trade http://hnn.us/article/41431
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Excellent post! There are people in my own family who use these b.s. arguments yet claim they aren’t racist. I don’t abide that kind of excuse making. There is a whole lot of hideous behavior–exploitation, maiming, murder, starvation, rape, kidnapping, you name it–that was perpetrated for a very long time by more people than we can count. Never does the evildoing of one justify further evildoing.
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What can be done so there is racial rest in the US? I’m white, & I honestly have never done anything negative to any black person ever. I can truthfully say my family hasn’t either. I had black people at my large, formal wedding in 1968 as guests. I’ve experienced anticaucasianism a great deal. I lived in Northern Calif a long time where the races mixed well, then moved back to Memphis, Tenn where I was born & raised. What a shock! I’ve felt so sad, because I’ve loved blacks. Benefiting from what slaves did a long time ago is not what I ought to do? What can we do to have peace?
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“anticaucasianism “?
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Roseann,
First, you need to admit your own racism. Do a serious and thorough introspection. Question yourself and your views.
Second, listen to what black people are saying. There are good reasons why some of us don’t trust or like whites. It didn’t come from a vacuum, and it is waaaaaaaay more than “just” slavery.
Third, Educate other whites with racist issues with blacks, AFTER you’ve done an extensive self-reflection and self-enlightenment.
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Roseann, first of all let me say I believe the premise of your comment is a great start. Asking questions on a site visited by people that know more about racism than any other is a good way to get many questions answered and learn how we can be more sensitive to others and how the little things we do and say can hurt another’s feelings, even though we may not be able to see why at first. It is not important what we feel but more important what the other person feels by our comments and actions. As Caucasians that want to change we must learn or realize that we have unknowingly evolved into a people with a supreme subconscious that have us believing that the white race is better than other races or at least our outward comments and actions have those we have offended seeing it this way. Right now I am using race as a talking point but really there is only one race and hopefully one day we will never have to break people down by the color of their skin to get a point across.
I realize that you may have incurred some racial abuse but whites in America unfortunately are negligent of any racism towards them from blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and so on due to our deplorable behavior in the past and on a lesser note, that still exist to this day. Blacks who dislike whites have an excuse and as whites have evolved into racially arrogant people, blacks have evolved into a people who have a universal dislike of whites due to their treatment by many of their white countrymen and the white government they looked to for assistance.
Slavery was the foundation of abuse but is far from the end of the abuse and it’s domino affect is an atrocity that exist to a lesser extent to this very day. We must not be insensitive and when someone says your comments are offensive you can ask them why but only in an inquisitive way and not in a way that sounds like what they are feeling is ridiculous or not worthy of an insult or pain. Learn from what someone is saying and change the way you speak about race and race related issues and remember what is not offensive to you may be very offensive to another. Some of your post was offensive even to me as I read it. Your depiction of Caucasian racism was offensive because again I believe that whites in America cannot be racially insulted by Blacks because there is a reason for Blacks to dislike whites; slavery, oppression, segregation, social and economic abuse and exclusion, over 1,000 white hate groups, the KKK, poll taxes, voter suppression, lynching’s, estimated 8 million murders over 500 years, inequality, exclusion, exclusion, exclusion and the list goes on. Now try to make a list of atrocities that Blacks have imposed on whites; mad at whites, distrust of whites, crime against whites, the Black Panthers, that’s about all I got…So you see, if you could erase the last 500 years of abuse and replace it with love, inclusion, complete acceptance and equality and then you were racially abused by a person of another color then your claim of caucasianism would hold some clout but as it stands it is just offensive, even to me. Listen, learn and change…best advice I can give you but I am white as well and only those who have been most abused or affected by racism can give you the best advice…Keep the faith and when you have a question I would assume you could come to this site and get many of your questions answered if not all of them…God Bless.
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Since america was cruel, The holocaust means nothing to you? Everyone of ever culture and of every race were slaves. NO ONE HAD IT WORSE THEN OTHERS. Get over it
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O and if you distrust or dislike a race for ur petty thing from the past ur pathetic . and your no better than the owners of slaves them selfs
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So M you are comparing rape, torture, murder, hangings, slavery, oppression, poll taxes, exclusion, inequality, voter suppression, KKK, 1000 white hate groups with someone who dislikes or distrust someone? It is clear that you do not have the intelligence nor the humanity to join such conversations. Your comments are that of someone who has a mind of a child and your comparison about the Holocaust is boggling to say the least. We are talking about America and the people who live in America and where they came from and where they are today, if you can’t handle hearing the truth then maybe you should go back to your X-Box and leave us HUMAN BEINGS alone…thank you and have a good day.
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“estimated 8 million murders over 500 years”
Where did this number come from and what does that represent?
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A hard and fast number you will not find, the best you will be able to find are estimates based on good data. These numbers deal with only those captured in Africa through their first year of slavery wherever they ended up. So to begin with: From page 1, section 2 predicts by David Stannard in American Holocaust (1992), estimates that some 30-60 million Africans died being enslaved. 50% mortality during capture and stored, a 10% mortality among the survivors while crossing the ocean and another 50% mortality rate 1st year. Overall, 35-80 % mortality rate in transit. Other numbers, and authors are quoted with different numbers in the same section. See site below it is considered one of the best. Below it is the search equation I put into the engine you might find some other interesting sites by working it.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatv…
http://search.aol.com/aol/search?q=estim…
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I am familiar with the concept of Democide, or Death by Government.
But I am strongly disagreeing with the use of the word Murder. No doubt there were a whole lot of African tribesmen who were murdered from Point A, on the African continent, to their final destination at Point B. And since probably more died from disease of which they had no natural immunity than were murdered outright, they can not be lumped in the same category.
Additionally, where does this number of 500 years come from? What does that represent?
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where does this number of 500 years come from? What does that represent?
Excellent question. The emancipation proclamation was delivered in 1863. Subtract 500 and that’s 1363. America wasn’t even discovered until 1492. To answer your question, the 500 years comes from their imagination and it represents a canard.
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Let’s be clear. In these united States of America, as the uSA, emancipation started in New York in the year 1799. Given it was largely unprofitable in the yankee States, several of them began passing legislation for the gradual, conditional abolishing of slavery within their borders. So that by about 1827, slavery as an institution no longer existed in the northern States. BUT…
It must be recognised that this was also because most of these yankee States DID NOT want Blacks living amongst them.
Which is why it was abolished conditionally and across a broad stretch of tyme. this gave the owners to realise their iinvestment and then to sell them at a profit. This way, the yankee slave owner suffered no loss.
Also, the 1863 Emancipation freed next to no one. For if lincoln had of had his way, at wars end, presuming his side was going to win, he would have had slavery continue to exist as it had afore. It was the 13th Amendment, declared ratified in December of 1865, along with the ratifying votes of some of the recently convened Southern States legislatures’ votes, that unconditionally abolished involuntary African servitude across the land.
A point of note.
I rely on the year 1783 as when the united States of American began to exist, because until the peace treaty was signed, independence was not ever a foregone conclusion. So, slavery existed in the United States, or America if y’all prefer, from 1783 unto 1865, a mere 82 years. Not any hundreds of years.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
You could look at it that way, but the country itself was being put together much sooner than that. So to be frank people would more likely take it from the standpoint of when slavery became a part of trade in the country from the beginning rather than some point in time that you or anyone else feels it is appropriate. Should slavery before 1783 be discounted just because the united states was formed then?
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@Da Jokah
” America wasn’t even discovered until 1492.”—Actually I believe it was discovered before then but not by those who the history books rave about and not by the name America.
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@ Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
And slavery existed in the Confederacy a mere 4 years! High five!
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If I am not mistaken it was 1619 that the first slave ship arrived to the colonies. Slavery was said to end in 1865 so I will say about 246 years of slavery. Not the “mere” 82 years you believe it to be or rather would prefer it to be.
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“A mere 82 years”
(Oh, I get it. I guess it’s no big deal then.)
SERIOUSLY? THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE A VALID ARGUEMENT? First off, your history is incorrect in terms of the dates of emancipation laws and how they manifested. Secondly, emanicipatikn in the various Northern colonies and states did not in any way guarantee or even attempt equality. Third, lynchings have occurred in my own lifetime, and I am part of Generation X, so oppression is absolutely still a huge problem in this country. But most importantly, the name of the physical land within imaginary lines drawn upon a constantly changing political map doesn’t change the fact that MILLIONS of HUMANS were ENSLAVED.
There’s a special place in Hades for deniers like you.
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@ Da Jokah
People have been living in the Americas for at least 13,000 years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture
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These are semantics, we are talking about the capturing or buying of human beings who were placed inside the bottom of a ship full of feces and urine and all sorts of disease. What difference if it was 1 year or 1,000 years? Women and children were tossed overboard in the middle of the ocean if they became sick or were thought to have a disease, by definition this is MURDER. Men who fought back were beaten and in many cases hung, by definition MURDER. On the plantation more of the same went on and remember the captains of those times kept meticulous records on ship and they counted cargo going in and going out. They lost some 50% of their cargo many times so the number 8 million is very conservative. You say you have a problem with the term murder? Do you have a problem using the word murder when regarding the Jewish who died in the Nazi death camps? Because the way you explain it those who died in those camps were just a product of war, not murder. When they were starved to death, just like the slaves of America, that does not count as murder by your definition, it was a product of their “SITUATION”. When the Germans lined them up and shot them in the back of the head that is because they are war criminals, not murder by your definition, just like when a slave gets caught trying to escape and is hung. In a court of law in these here States of America any time a person is negligent or culpable in the death of another human being the law considers it murder, whether manslaughter or first degree it is all murder. If you place a man in the bottom of a ship against his will and he gets sick due to his conditions by the law of the land you are a murderer. Here is another little fact those of you who like to pretend these atrocities happened so many centuries ago; in 1965 4 black men a week were being lynched in the Untied States, mostly in the South, FACT! So when a child of a slave was born due to the rape of the slave owner and was dropped into a well or had a pillow placed over it’s mouth that is just a product of their situation I guess and the Holocaust was not the murder of millions of Jews but just a product of war…I think I understand you now. Here is a site that will tell you the specifics…………..
http://franklaughter.tripod.com/cgi-bin/histprof/misc/slavery1.html
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You go Melanie, glad to have another GOOD and DECENT person on this site…Abagond as always my brother good to be here with you.
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People have been living in the Americas for at least 13,000 years:
Not the people alluded to in the original comment.
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Winners write the history books, right? So why exactly should I believe what any white says? Honestly? Why does any non-white person believe what these murders and racist apologists say? And no, some hand-picked, uncle tom coon’s opinion don’t coun’t either.
So Skip Gates or whatever he calls himself can go eff himself.
I’ve done the research. I can’t find any trace of (what we know as) “slavery” on the continent. I’ve seen a few monarchs (Four. In five CENTURIES) who did cooperated to some degree for the sake of saving their own peoples. But that’s it.
Now, if that’s the case, and suddenly this blankets ALL AFRICANS with some sort of guilt, then I expect these pinkskins to write in their history books that;
*The Japanese are complicit in their own nuking
*The Iraqis/Afghans are complicit in their own destruction in two uncalled for wars.
and most importantly…
*That Jews WILLINGLY SENT THEMSELVES to them camps…
…as ALL of the above mentioned had agents who cooperated with those responsible for those given atrocities.
But you won’t hear it.
Yet because the destruction of AFRICA and her children is something else altogether, never seen or matched in the history of ANY other people, the pinks feel the need to obfuscate and lie. ON PURPOSE. They do not have the integrity to be honest and fair. We know this. Lets be real honest with ourselves for a moment. If they did, why is George Washington or any other slave owner honored anywhere in this country and to any degree?
Case rested.
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Here is what HISTORIANS write about slavery in America and not some racially motivated citizen…..
Historians normally date the start of slavery in the North American colonies to 1619. That year, a Dutch ship carrying African slaves docked at Point Comfort, which served as Jamestown’s checkpoint for ships wanting to trade with the colonists.
The crew of the Dutch ship was starving, and as John Rolfe noted in a letter to the Virginia Company’s treasurer Edwin Sandys, the Dutch traded 20 African slaves for food and supplies.
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@William
Well said and you are right. We are arguing years as if more or less makes it ok.
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Come on, we talk about WW2 to this day and it lasted 4 years and only a fraction of Americans died compared to the amount of slaves that died, slavery is another part of OUR history that still resonates to this day among our fellow countrymen and women and you want to argue about how many years did these people suffer murder, rape, lynching’s, oppression, separation of families…Do you have a son or a daughter? I want you to close your eyes and think about them right now….Now imagine if I came along and had your family come out and stand in your driveway. I have about 6 men with guns pointed at you and your family, now I take your son and your daughter and place them in a van. I tell you that your daughter will be used as a sex slave and when she can no longer appeal to her owner she will be forced to work 16 hours a day. Your son will immediately go to work in the salt mines and he will work 18 hours a day and when he gets lazy or combatant he will be beaten to an inch of his life. They will never be free, they will never be happy, they will be tortured every day of their life and they will never know what having a loving family of their own is like except what they remember of yours. You are left there with your wife alone, you will never see your teenage daughter and son again….How does that feel? That’s what millions of African and African American families had to endure…So save your compassionless specifics to yourself.
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@William
Are you ok?
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Saw Twelve Years A Slave, everyone should see this narrative of slavery.
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“in 1965 4 black men a week were being lynched in the Untied States, mostly in the South, FACT!”
According to the statistics I could find, and according to Tuskeegee, no one was lynched in this country in 1965.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html
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According to this there was quite a bit going on in 1965
http://www.autopsis.org/foot/lynchdates3.html
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Mary Burrell
I am excited about seeing the movie myself. I can’t wait.
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@Sharina: It’s hard and brutal.
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I saw some of the previews and I think it was hard for me knowing that this man was ripped away from his family and sold into slavery.
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1965
Allie W. Shelby murdered Flora Mississippi January 22 1965
Malcom X murdered New York City New York February 21 1965
Deputy O’Neal Moore murdered Bogalusa Louisiana June 2 1965
Willie Brewster murdered Anniston Alabama July 15 1965
28 unidentified blacks murdered Los Angeles (Watts) California August 11-16 1965
Perry Small lynched Greensboro Alabama August 27 1965
Eddie Cook murdered Detroit Michigan November 7 1965
Many if not most of these were your typical Black-on-Black murders. Even so, hardly the exaggerated 4 men per week.
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Here are some sites you can visit to get a clearer understanding of lynching in America. First of all even when lynching was a spectator sport in the South it was still against the law, “Yeah Right”, so an estimated 40% of lynching’s were not reported and still the numbers reported are as high as 4,952 from the late 1800’s to the late 1960’s. You see before the civil war lynching’s were not that popular but once the south lost the losers couldn’t except the loss and began taking their frustrations out on who else, the poorest, the powerless and the most defenseless, that’s what all bullies and sociopaths do, they target those who cannot defend themselves. Of course once confidence was restored and laws changed, those same whites wouldn’t dare approach a Black man today and try to subvert their will. I may have said it wrong in my previous post and what I meant to say was that on average four lynching’s a week occurred in the U.S. all the way up to the late 60’s, FACT. Those are the actual reported lynching’s. If you really want to see what happened I welcome you to visit YouTube and type in “100 Years of Lynching’s”. It was originally a book written in the 90’s but there are video’s of research and historical photos of lynching’s and all the people and children standing around cheering, smiling, patting their children on the head, all while a young man hangs from a tree, some burning ALIVE until nothing is left of his appendages but charred end trails. Anyone who feels they need to defend these murderous racist COWARDS has no compassion for his fellow man. Take a look at some of these sights and then come back with your splitting hair excuses.
http://faculty.berea.edu/browners/chesnutt/classroom/lynchingstat.html
http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/the-mississippi-civil-rights-slayings-of-the-1960s-2-55522/
http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet/USLynch.html
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=lynching+postcards&qpvt=lynching+postcards&FORM=IGRE
I tried to post the youtube video but it wouldn’t let me and other videos kept popping up…it shouldn’t be hard to find…BUT PLEASE LET ME WARN EVERYONE IT IS EXTREMELY SAD, GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING BEYOND WORDS.
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Here is but one example of a massacre and remember half of all crimes against Blacks were not reported and if you even try to deny that the corrupt and racist powers that be in those areas and at that time did not keep as many incidents under wraps from the federal government then you are not worthy of conversation because you have no grasp of reality…
There were a myriad of violent incidents that led up to the Rosewood Massacre. During the summer of 1919, there were outbreaks of racial violence in several northern cities due in part to competition for jobs and combined with the racial atmosphere of the time. It trickled down to the South and many of the southern states including Florida were systematically and effectively disenfranchising Blacks, creating barriers to voter registration and voting. Blacks were the numerical majority in many districts in the South and by preventing them from voting allowed Whites to remain in power in perpetuity.
This also meant Blacks could not participate in the court system as jurors–only as defendants–and they had no elected representatives in local or state government or in law enforcement. Florida had also joined many states passing jim crow laws that imposed strict racial segregation in public facilities and transportation. In addition, the Ku Klux Klan was strong in the Florida area openly holding initiation ceremonies and inciting violence against Blacks with impunity. Rosewood became a model for the oppression of Blacks in America.
A partial chronology of the events of violence against Blacks leading up to and including the Rosewood Massacre began in 1920:
? Whites removed four Black men from a local jail and lynched them for being accused of raping a White woman;
? Five Blacks were killed in a dispute over voting rights;
? A White mob destroyed 25 homes, two churches and a Black Masonic Lodge;
? A Black man was lynched for allegedly attacking a White woman;
? A White schoolteacher was murdered near Rosewood and when it was learned that Blacks were in the vicinity, they were automatically considered the guilty ones–three Blacks were murdered. (Whites even exacted their version of “retributive equality”–three Blacks equaled one White).
These incidents raised fears on the general public and demonstrated the swiftness of “White justice” when Blacks were the alleged perpetrators. There were no judges, juries or trials. And whenever there were, the results were always the same since Blacks had no “juries of their peers and the judges were all White. Also, the events in Rosewood mirrored similar racial incidents in other cities around the country.
The actual events in Rosewood were similar in nature to the above began on New Year’s Eve 1922:
? The Ku Klux Klan held a parade and a rally with a burning cross and a banner about protecting [White] womanhood. (This was consistent with their actions against Blacks since many of the violence against Blacks were often triggered by alleged assaults and/or insults by Black men against White women);
? A White woman claimed that an unidentified Black man had attacked, beat and raped her;
? A mob of White men apprehended a Black man killed him;
? White vigilantes descended on a house, killed a Black woman and wounded several others;
? Most of the remaining town’s Black residents fled into the Florida swamp to escape being killed;
? Approximately 200 to 300 Whites from surrounding communities converged on the town to assist the vigilantes in burning houses and killing Blacks;
? The churches, the vacant houses and most of the businesses and homes were burned;
? On the sixth day of violence, some of the Blacks escaped by train to Gainesville. As they left, Whites moved in and burned the remaining structures.
The tragic events of that period in American history were captured in a movie titled “Rosewood.” A book and a documented history of the massacre were chronicled and submitted to the Florida Board of Regents in 1993. The Florida legislature passed a bill to compensate the survivors and their descendants, and the site of the former town has been designated a Florida Heritage Landmark. However, no efforts have been reportedly made to locate any of the living perpetrators of these tragic acts. And just as there were “named” survivors of the tragedy, there were “living” perpetrators.
Some of the named survivors who contributed to the Rosewood History were:
AARON, MAHULDA, JAMES, SARAH, EMMA AND HAYWARD CARRIER;
MARY, CHARLES, WILSON AND MARGARIE HALL;
MARTINE AND LYDIA GOINS.
Governor Lawton Chiles, in signing a reparations bill for the survivors, referred the incident as “blind act of bigotry.” However, bigotry is never blind; it is usually done with both eyes open.
Ironically, as the country has recently shown the world that Rosewood is past history and that substantial progress has been made, there has been a surge in Ku Klux Klan activities since the election of President-elect Barack Obama. Recent law enforcement reports claim that the rise in racist and White supremacist activities is not an accident. Progress on one hand appears to be offset by a return to the nation’s dark past directed at the individual who will inherit the highest office in the land.
It would be great if some of the tremendous efforts and resources that are expended to eradicate the Taliban and Al Qaeda–because their mission is to kill Americans–could also be directed at the eradication of the Ku Klux Klan. After all, the Klan’s mission is also to kill Americans–Black Americans.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“Many if not most of these were your typical Black-on-Black murders. Even so, hardly the exaggerated 4 men per week.”—None the less you claimed there was no lynchings according to your source which was wrong. I on the other hand never made claim to or agreed that it was the 4 men per week. Now if they are indeed black-on-black murders then it would be fair to provide the source that claims as much. Don’t you think?
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“To lynch” a person basically means to carry out – usually by mob action – an extrajudicial murder, often but not always, of a suspected criminal.
So, while hanging might be typical of this kind of murder, hanging and lynching are not necessarily one and the same.
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So, regarding the instantly simply “giving” the vote to the recently freed slave, I ask. Was he able to instantly comprehend what it meant? Was he instantly able to judge which candidate would uphold the US Constitution? Because according to the abolitionists, the “Negro” was kept in the lowest state of ignorance as any animal by their masters.
Now after four years of war, they can proclaim these selfsame former slaves as being intellectual enough to be ambassadors, representatives, senators and the like?
It cant be both. Cant have it both ways. Read Hill’s very sarcastic retort.
Excerpts from “An address by Lieutenant-General D. H. Hill, on Memorial Day, June 6th, 1887, at Baltimore, before the Society of the Army and Navy of the Confederate States in the State of Maryland.”
Results of the War:
I would place first of these the general diffusion of love for the Constitution of the United States. Time was when the South-hating philanthropists denounced it as “a covenant with death and a league with hell,” gotten up by the slave-power in the interests of slavery. But in 1861, the philanthropists experienced a change of heart, and ever since have talked of the Constitution as that “sacred instrument,” that “bulwark of freedom,” that “palladium of liberty,” etc., etc. I am glad of their conversion, suspiciously sudden though it was, and I hope that they will never fall from grace. As a stalwart Presbyterian, I believe in the perseverance of the saints.
Change of views in regard to the intellectual, moral and social status of the Negro:
The philanthropists used to tell of the cruelty and brutality of slaveholders to their slaves, and said that they had reduced the negroes to the lowest state of ignorance, barbarism and bestiality. But in the reconstruction period, the philanthropists underwent a radical change of views and discovered that these negroes, whom they had described as more savage and degraded than the barbarians on the Congo, were not merely enlightened and civilized enough to be freemen and voters, but also to be United States Senators and Congressmen, Foreign Ministers, Consuls and Marshals, Governors of States, Judges, Members of State Cabinets, &c. I am glad that the philanthropists found out that the Old South had trained its slaves so carefully for these high and responsible duties. No other masters in the world’s history ever gave such training to their slaves. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States are the grandest possible eulogies to the Old South.
But there was one great error in this training. The simple-hearted, confiding Southern masters, always careless of their own money, did not teach their slaves to be cautious about their investments, and tens of thousands of these credulous creatures put their money in a bank in Washington, established by the philanthropists, and lost it all.
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“on Sat 26 Oct 2013 at 20:29:32, William” said, “in 1965 4 black men a week were being lynched in the Untied States, mostly in the South, FACT!”
So it is on him to provide his source, first.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Yea it would be for him to do it, but I provided a source and you responded to me, so at this point…it is up to you to provide a source for me. Or you can not….whatever you decided, but making claims and not backing them is a bit unfair.
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Pay It Forward
Are you by chance Fiamma?
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Why, yes, Sharina, “Fiamma” was my previous username. How did you guess? Is it my writing style that gives me away? 🙂
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LOL. Yes the writing style but also a wild guess. 🙂
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Of the hundreds of photos showing a black man being lynched there is not ONE photo showing a black man being hung by a mob of other black men or even one black man. Show me hundreds of photos showing black men hanging black men…I challenge you to find me these photos, if indeed you say that most of these lynchings were carried out by blacks hanging blacks, show me the monumental amount of evidence to compare the monumental amount of evidence we have of whites hanging blacks. After all they must exist if most of the hangings were from blacks hanging blacks. Then tell me what was the motive for Black men to hang Black men. We know that white men hung Black men out of penis envy but we do not know why black men would hang black men….Your juvenile or possibly ignorant comment has indeed brought on a laughable response. It is a common strategy for those who lack facts and who defend atrocity to blame the victim or turn the facts into folly or fiction, commonly those with low IQ’s will take this information as fact and immediately spread such disinformation to their racist peers…such is how over 1,000 white hate groups have been created in this country, that and inbreeding.
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Thank you Sharina for helping me out, I frequently write faster than what I can proofread when I am writing something I am passionate about and it’s nice when someone has your back…
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@ William: eloquent and insightful commentary.
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Who said anything about
“a black man being hung by a mob of other black men or even one black man.”?
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@Sharina: I enjoyed your comments on this topic as well.
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Thank you Mary, my dear friend and wonderful human being…your comments help to calm me down and smile again…God Bless.
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@ William
No problem.
@ Mary Burrell
Thanks. 🙂
@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Actually you made the claim of “Many if not most of these were your typical Black-on-Black murders. Even so, hardly the exaggerated 4 men per week.” To the list I provided of lynched individuals. If I am not mistaken William is asking you to provide evidence that those men were lynched or hung by black men. Malcom X you might get a pass on because I believe he was murdered by 3 Muslim men.
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I could be wrong but if I am then I am sure someone will correct me. 🙂
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Wait so did America only begin when the white people came and took over…? Oh yea because native Americans don’t exist (or shouldn’t) according to the white people who stole their country.
Anybody seeing a pattern here??
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“people came and took over…”
“who stole their country.”
See, all people all over the world throughout all mankind’s history have done this. It is the nature of all man to oppress, to conquer, to subdue.
It is NOT the province of just one race of people, nor of any one ethnic of people.
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All white people!
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Yes Sierra you are absolutely correct. The English nearly conquered the entire world and the white man has been in control of this world for about 1,000 years now. It is not true that all people take over entire countries and commit genocide. As a matter of fact only a few empires have done this; the English, the Persians, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Germans almost did it, etc. Most races, countries, tribes and so on our completely complacent with living within their means and conquering only hunger and life in general. We spoke earlier about the African Americans who lost their lives due to many reasons but mostly due to their conditions and murder brought on by the government but mostly due to whites in power and their racist followers. What we don’t here about enough is another few atrocities carried out by the U.S. government and the American people at that time and that was the decimation of the Native American and the Chinese. The U.S. government has a recorded number of a million Native Americans killed. This does not count the hidden murders, murders by vigilantes, civilians, hired mercenaries, etc. The real numbers are from 4 million to 115 million based on university studies on population and similar raids and camp slaughters. A third atrocity carried out by mostly local citizens and law enforcement in the 1800’s was the thousands of murders, torture and enslavement of Chinese immigrants. Every western state has a documented and undocumented history of atrocities against the Chinese immigrant. They came here looking for prosperity and got nothing but despair and DEATH. These poor human beings had zero protection under the law, were horribly hated by whites, were spat on by women and children and beaten and enslaved by men. Some men would purposely sell a gold mine to a group of Chinese at a remarkable low price and befriend the immigrants. This would fool the men into believing that people were good here and they were being welcomed….then after the Chinese dug the mine and did all the work the moment gold was discovered the men who sold them the claim would then kill the Chinese and bury them in the mine and take back the claim, which was never legally sold in the first place. I can’t even tell you how disgusted I feel knowing that this happened, it is some of the worse treatment of human beings I can think of….Don’t listen to those who deny these atrocities, they are the exact reason why such atrocities continued for so long because those who could have stood up and lent these human beings their voice or their aid were too cowardly and instead would refuse to believe such things existed…I am not one of those people, the truth will set you free but more importantly it will set those who are mistreated free!
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@William
Waiting for another commenter to chip in that the Chinese, too, sold their own people as “coolie” slave labour to Western countries and European colonies.
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Again the treatment of another human being does hinge on whether or not a FEW WEALTHY and POWERFUL men sold their poor and powerless people. That’s like blaming the drug dealer for your drug habit. If I buy some drugs and go out and rob a rich white family and murder them whose fault is it? The drug dealers or mine? There is no excuse for buying a human being and if you buy a slave for labor then you should use them for labor, not to rape, rob, beat, drown, murder, hang, torture, burn, impregnate, etc…Besides it’s just another example of INEQUALITY; the Chinese people (the huge majority) were poor, hungry and powerless and they were being controlled and sold by a FEW wealthy men who were corrupt, in power and controlled the weak, similar to what has gone on in this country from our beginning and today in different ways. Another way deniers try to change the momentum of the conversation is again to blame the victim by pointing out the insignificant or pointing out the exception and ignore the rule.
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I suppose you guys would blame the genocide of the several Asian type people by the Asian type people on Whites?
As for the jungle-laded dark peoples, tribal warfare has always been. The so-called American natives themselves immigrated here from elsewhere. Even they have tales of conquest of other tribes. True, some were far more aggressive than others. This too has always been.
So we know from history that all peoples were conquered and brutalised by others, far afore the ascendency of the White race.
However, humanity has never in its recorded history ascended to the heights of civilisation it is at now until Whites did gain supremacy. So many diseases have been conquered leading to many lives being saved. That we are communicating like this is because of us. That y’all live in these united States is another testament to us and that y’all stay and enjoy the fruits of our labor is further a testament.
Without us, y’all would be back in the jungles living now however it would have evolved. And according to history, even to day, many of the tribes live as they lived thousands of years ago. So too with the indigenous people of central and South America. Only the European Whites live radically different than did our ancestors of even a couple hundred years ago. And by extension, these united States of America.
The least y’all can do is say, “THANK YOU!”
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and it didn’t take long before Jimmy Jim Bob Johnny showed his true colors….Bravo Bravo another example of modern ignorance rooted in his cro-magnon gene pool… So it is true then if you are taking credit for all of Americas accomplishments and failures then you have just admitted that YES whites today also share in the guilt of past behavior…by your own statement that is exactly what you are saying…and tell me SHIRLEY what have you done in your brief time on this Earth to make America so great. what have you done but prove that all people can be ignorant, shallow, heathenistic and just plain hateful of something or someone they FEAR?…and if you want to thank anybody you can thank a French man for finding this country and the Black and Chinese man for building this country and now why don’t you bow to our Black and excellent President….and then bow to our next white woman president and then in 2040 when the white race will no longer be the majority of the population you can bow to that!
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I have ever been so bold so as to post my own name. In the stead of hiding behind pseudonyms So it is I have ever been online.
William asks what have I done? I ask thee the same, sir?
In responce to Kiwi:
I have taken up photography in recent years. Many and several photographs have I posted on my facebook pages.
From the responces to an honest man, here, I surmise this is yet another HATE FILLED, HATEFUL, i.e. (full of hate) website of Black people filled to the brim with HATE.
If so, why stay??! I know were I reared in such a place that I so vehemently loathe, I so have historical issues with, why stay? Why not leave to such a place that offers whatever it is y’all are looking for? Are seeking?
For I can not even imagine living within a family that loathes me so, according to so many people here.
For where I am not wanted, I leave and go to where I am wanted.
Good luck, y’all. Au Revoir, adios, ciao, saynara, aloha, later!
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@ Jimmy
Good to know! So I guess you will be leaving then, that is unless anybody wants you here…?
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Arrivederci; aufedersein; hasta la vista; godspeed; so long; don’t let the doorknob hit ya…; y’all come back now, ya hear?! buh bye.
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The least y’all can do is say, “THANK YOU!”
__ __ __
Wow. What a GROUCH! You must not have received your monthly royalties for the individual inventions of Spam and cheese in a spray can. Mmm-mmm!
THANK YOU, JIMMY!!!
(Now, if only some white man could manage to invent cheese AND Spam together in a spray can, somebody [who’s not me] would be real good!)
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@jefe
I was not aware that the Chinese did that? Thank you for that information.
@ Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Whites did not do it on their own. This country was built up on the backs of those slaves you seem to believe contributed a “mere” 82 years. You enjoy inventions not only from whites but from people of color of as well. So I will says whites played a part like others, but they are owed no more of a thank you than the other people that helped build it.
“From the responces to an honest man, here, I surmise this is yet another HATE FILLED, HATEFUL, i.e. (full of hate) website of Black people filled to the brim with HATE.”—Yet you would be surprised to know William is white and kiwi is Chinese (correct me if I am wrong).
Now it was one thing for you to be lacking on the lynching knowledge etc. but it is another story to be lacking on information and then get mad at others for pointing it out to you. While your response is not surprising, it does enlighten me of the delusions people repeatedly wish to hold on to.
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@ William: Comment deleted for using not using a commenter’s proper name.
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My apologies for letting my emotions get the better of me…in addition I did not know this was proper etiquette but I did know it was not polite…I will behave and use smarter ways to debate my point…thank you Abagond for your ethical and proper oversight.
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intresting
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To all the bigots in the world:….Remember this, “By excusing evil you have yourself become a part of that evil and it is this acceptance that fuels evil and perpetuates it’s momentum.”….
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….william b. 2013.
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Agabob sounds like a butthurt racist. That said, that this rant is still generating comments three years after the fact is nothing short of impressive. Kudos.
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Seriously you need to get over it, there is no factual information here. Being defensive and ranting isn’t helping your people.
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@Mom….By saying your people I take it you mean the human race because it is obvious by your dissonance that you are not part of the race of men….and what information are you referring to which no facts exist?…Lets get into some REAL discussion about your stance on the enslavement of human beings and the social and economic outcome of such treatment.
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I have read several comments on this post from the start. My questions, and comments are going to cover many of the posts that I did read. I will start off by saying that I refuse to click on any of the links that were included in some of the posts. NOW, Let me start ……If you were born in Africa, you are African. America;American. 1.) Lets say a “black-colored” person,born in Europe,moved to the U.S. , would he be labeled as an African-European-American? Lets not label . If we were to label, then “Black and White” are labels too. My ancestors are from Dublin, Ireland. I do not use any label for myself,as an Irish American. ” I ” was born in the U.S., I am an American.A friend of mine was born in Africa. He told me one time that he wished the black people here would quit calling themselves “African American”. Why would this “African Born” man say this? I asked…. His answer was : ” These people wouldn’t last 5 min. in Africa. They were born in America”. NOW, 2.)I say to blame a race for slavery is wrong.Since there are so many instances of slavery in history, blaming a nationality would be a better way to describe it. My reason for saying that is because that would make it seem like the “Yellow” people didn’t do anything wrong when they bombed Pearl Harbor.To call people by a “label” to me is racist . NOW 3.) Would being told to do something that was against your wishes be considered ‘Endowed Servant ‘ or Slavery’? ..The Irish people were surcome to doing things against their wishes, but were given a title of ” Servants” Those may have been some of my blood relatives. Do “servants” have any rights to use their own “Label” for any gain?Is it fair that since my relatives were forced into doing things that were not to their like,can I now label myself as an ‘Irish American??If my relatives were only beat 2 times a week,raped 1 time ,and starved for 13 of 30 days, does it make them enslaved or still servants? LASTLY …. I am not defending anyone. But I still have yet to see any “Running Deer” or “Tonto” as a C.E.O. or owner of a large company. Never seen “Raging Bear” drawing Lottery Numbers. and I will probably never see a “Sitting Bull” as President. Who got Shit on the worse in that situation?
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” He told me one time that he wished the black people here would quit calling themselves “African American”. Why would this “African Born” man say this? I asked…. His answer was : ” These people wouldn’t last 5 min. in Africa”. true that blacks in America should stop calling themselves African Americans. am African but i never knew that we live in a different planet that other people can’t last 5 min.
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@Mike….being that you are not a black person living in America it is impossible on every level for you to understand what being black and living in America is like. Your post, all be it some what respectful, is just another example of ignorance. First of all I have never felt or read where anyone has blamed the white race for slavery. What I have read was people giving their opinion of slavery and how it affects the generations today. You just like many other whites think that you would have the same ability to adapt and forgive if you yourself were black….this is preposterous and ignorant. The fallout of slavery will be felt for many more generations to come. Many people think that slavery was hundreds of years ago but lets look at the facts; Slavery was abolished only 150 years ago give or take, the right to own a human being may have been abolished but the equal treatment of all men in the eyes of the law only changed 50 years ago and up until that time blacks were treated worse than animals in this country. Blacks were not allowed to marry whites, eat at the same restaurants, drink at the same fountains, go to the same schools, they had to pay a POLL TAX, they were not allowed to work in some industries or do certain jobs, in the South as many as 4 blacks a week were being killed due to racism, etc, etc. This was only 50 years ago, I am only 47, this means that there are millions of Americans who grew up no better than what slaves endured minus the title “Slave”.
To this day slavery is in the thoughts and minds and DNA of many of our American countrymen and if you were a compassionate person, empathetic to the feelings of all people you would realize that it is not your place to judge a group of people who suffer from post traumatic slavery syndrome and who have the worse poverty, worse inequality, worse crime and worse education than the other Americans. Those of us who have never been slaves in America, who get paid more money for the same job, whose children get more money for their education, whose children are not murdered at outrageous rates, who get housing only to learn a black couple with better credit and more income were refused housing…..we don’t get to tell those of us who have larger mountains to climb how to process their grief or how they should process inequality or why they were treated like animals by the world and especially America. Because when a white person tells a black person how they should deal with slavery or the hereafter it makes you look exactly like the white men who enslaved Africans in the first place. It’s not blacks who have to change…IT”S US!
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Reblogged this on Acorns and Leaves and commented:
As people encounter the American system of slavery through the movie, 12 Years a Slave-I’m hearing some of these same arguments again. I think this author does a good job of discussing some of these arguments used to deflect the horrors of slavery away from the United States.
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Not just the institution of permanent and inheritable race based American plantation chattel slavery, but the issue of race that largely grew from perceptions formed about blacks over time after plantation labor became focused on race and became permanent and inheritable race based American plantation chattel slavery. This is why many whites, regardless of whether their families were planters (or people that were either employed by planters as overseers and patrollers, or others that worked in businesses that dealt in products made from plantations)) viewed blacks as “inferior”. This is also why many of them had contempt for blacks and saw them as a threat for jobs, supported and demanded segregation,white flight,etc. By focusing on slavery as if slavery was the only thing bad in American race relations and saying things like “whites were just sailing in the ocean and out of nowhere Africans came with other Africans and they forced whites to let them sell them to them and the whites didn’t know what else to do with them” (even though white traders had used the gun trade cycle to get enemy tribes on the coast to do what they wanted. Also the Africans who were paid to capture the victims,some of whom were captured by enemies also dealing with the whites, for the whites had nothing to do with what those whites were going to do to the victims later on) or “my family never owned slaves” or “my family wasn’t her when slavery happened” (even though the plantation economy may have played some part in helping America become prosperous to attract white immigrants seeking a better life, the racial thing that developed wasn’t a bad thing for whites,even poor whites,either),etc. is their way of trying to absolve guilt about their own racial views.
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@ William “Women and children were tossed overboard in the middle of the ocean if they became sick or were thought to have a disease”
William, not only were the sick, dead, and those considered diseased and troublesome tossed overboard, so were the healthy. Ship captains with their human cargo, had to ensure the survival of their vessels, and when/where the forces of nature reared its head, (hurricanes/storms) during the voyage, the lives of healthy African human beings had to be sacrificed to lighten the vessels, if that’s what was needed; they too were tossed overboard. It was not surprising therefore, as one or the posters here, Rayfield A. Waller alluded, saw an enormous growth and creation of economic structures to support the Atlantic Slave Trade, but also the pernicious institution of CHATEL SLAVERY; foremost among them were banking and the insurance industries – and of course, manufacturing.
To get back to the disposition of these ships’ human cargo overboard: as with any commodity, it had to contend with the economic vagaries of the market place – (piques/low-troughs) – the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was never spared these phenomena. Telephonic communication was non-existence; the journey from the West Coast of Africa to the Americas could take many months, and during those months, supply, but more importantly demand, could have changed – driving down the value of Whites/Europeans’ African human cargo. Despite what today we would consider the paucity of communication re: ships’ captains, the slave trade entrepreneurs in Europe and the Americas and their slave trading capitals, whether in Europe or the Americas, words would be conveyed to the ships captains that the market forces had changed: the bugbear of the market forces again, was on the demand side, rather than the supply.
British archives have many recorded of instances, where ships’ captains, on hearing that there were downturns in the market for slaves at given times, would toss most of their vessels’ African human cargo overboard while on the high seas; file claims for mercantile losses against their (cargoes/vessels) insurers and were paid off handsomely. This, unfortunately, was not an anomaly, but one of the many practices of the trade.
A few years back, while watching a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary on the British Slave Trade, the narrator discovered diaries of a particular ship’s captain who had been involved in the slave trade. He meticulously recorded, in writing, about his many trips along the Triangular Trade Route (From the West African Coast to the Americas, to Britain to West Africa Coast again) and the many, many instances that his ship was followed for days by sharks – waiting to feast on dead or live bodies of Africans tossed overboard – certainly, not one of the evils of the Trans-Atlantic Trade that “whites” care to discuss. It’s as if, the mindset of that cultural legacy of theirs – black people you are less than…ended in the nineteen sixties.
We are human being; human beings create cultures. Despite what “whites” would like to have black people believe, cultures are not discarded on the trash heap of antiquity in one or two generations, especially one developed and practised for many centuries.
Whites, and I’m using “whites” culturally, do you really believe that we aren’t where we are, because of where all of us have been – including yours/our forefathers and foremothers?
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@ Rebels11
“black people play the race card all the time”
I’m sick and tired of you guys with your ridiculous – “black people playing the race card” rhetoric!
If we’re all in this bloody card game together – how come black people are the only ones with the race card? Aren’t we all supposed to be playing with the cards we’re dealt, and from the same pack?
UNLESS, when the card is/was dealt, it was marked, unknown to the black people, and we ended up with all of them. The dealers of the card are overwhelmingly “white people.” So why the hell call foul when the card is played?
OR
If White People and Black People are/were given different decks from which to play, wouldn’t that cause confusion? What type of a card game would that be?
YOU PEOPLE NEED TO CUT OUT THE NONSENSICAL RHETORIC. It’s absolutely asinine!
The solution is: let’s play from the same deck and without marked card(s)
You may read anything you wish in my comment!
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Ubuntu. I feel your frustration… the race card is just another of the many WHITE deflection/denial tactics… as if black people actually benefit from being victims in a racist system.
“The solution is: let’s play from the same deck and without marked card(s)”
In order to do that whites would have to willingly forgo what they have practiced for HUNDREDS of years. Racism/White Supremacy. They are not willingly going to do that…. unless they are somehow motivated (for their own self interests) to do so. Clearly, we haven’t yet been able to MOTIVATE them to play from the SAME deck.
What do you think might motivate them to stop being racists?
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Ubuntu I shouldn’t be answering your very limited instructional comment but i will. The race card was played by the white man first. It was the white man who decided they were superior to other races. It was the white man who decided it would enslave BLACK people. It was the white man who decided they would enslave the Yellow man. It was the white man who decided they would massacre the Red man and take his land. It was the white man who decided it was okay to drop nuclear bombs on Yellow women and children. It was the white man who decided to create a HATE group called the KKK to eradicate a group of people who were poor, uneducated, non aggressive, oppressed, minding their own business and harmless. It was the white man who kept the Black, Red and Yellow citizens away from their money, their schools, their neighborhoods, their entertainment establishments, their restaurants…It was the white man who said you can’t vote, you can’t work the same jobs and you can’t go to our schools or live in our neighborhoods but we want you to fight OUR WARS, PAY OUR TAXES, PICK OUR FIELDS, WASH OUR CLOTHES, FIX OUR ROADS, etc…Now it is 2013 and Blacks and Native Americans are still the most oppressed, uneducated, poor, jobless, unequal group of Americans there are and whites are the highest paid, live in the safest cities, get faster law enforcement service, are not profiled, get more money for education than any other child, pay less taxes, get shot less by police, spend less time in jail than a black man doing the same crime, get their children put on amber alert 8 times more than black children, and so on, and so on, and so on…You cry and whine about Blacks playing the race card…Put your cards on the table and give me a list of facts that I have just given you and prove to me how blacks play the race card, because what I just showed you was that only one race has played the race card for the last 500 years and that is the WHITE MAN…If the white man hadn’t acted in this vial, inhuman, racist, cowardly way there wouldn’t even be a term known as the race card…We gave them no choice, we took everything from them and now those of us who are intellectually inferior only see it from their white superior narrow minded point of view…Later days Dude!
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@William
You and I are saying the same thing. Matari got it. All I was trying to say Rebels11is that it gets old hearing white people saying black people are playing “race card” and that they (white people) should find another metaphor. Whites cannot say, black people are playing the race card” and that they are not – if we are all supposed to be in the same card game called life – together. My assumption is, they see themselves as the default and that anything outside their conceived perimeter of existence is special.
These are the same people who will argue that there should be no BET (not a fan), since there is not WET – and they believe it.
Gay persons who wish to get marry – “special rights” it being outside the framework of heterosexual normative.
They’ll argue, there shouldn’t be any women studies, because there are no men studies, (believe it or not, many women will argue the same from a philosophical standpoint) but ask them to name a number of books that were assigned reading in college? – They’ll name fifteen white male authors.
Since “race” is a social construct, and, there is no race, (I don’t believe in the biological concept of race either) hence for them, there can be no racism; although the concept was conceived and practised for hundreds of years, leaving all of us, with its dastardly cultural legacy of it, especially as it relates POC – today’s elephant in the room
Discussing race and racism causes racism or more racism. I would love for that argument to be postulated with the myriad of diseases with which human being have to deal.
To sum up: one cannot use the metaphor “race card” because the oxygen that I breathe is in the forest I’m located and the other person is on a boat in the middle of ocean. If we live on earth, we all breathe oxygen. It’s preposterous to say that blacks are playing the race card and whites are not. As a matter of fact, the overwhelming number of whites plays the “race card” so well, it’s invisible to them.
Cheers William!
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@ William
“You cry and whine about Blacks playing the race card”
Just to be clear; I’m not crying and whining about “race card;” it the likes of Rebels11 and others of his ilk who are. I was just suggesting they find another metaphor. If the concept of race exist, it exists for all of us, including whites so they too are playing the “race card,” and very effectively.
“Ubuntu I shouldn’t be answering your very limited instructional…who are intellectually inferior only see it from their white superior narrow minded point of view…Later days Dude!”
To reiterate, I totally agree with your assertion above.
Cheers William!
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@Ubuntu, My Bad…I am quick to anger on this thread because of all the past racist who have posted and as I have learned through reading and learning so much on this site that I am a bit slower than most of you here. It is easy to see that many of you have educations far beyond a diploma and to that I am happy and proud of you all…Thanks Ubuntu..I am going to read your post again with my Big Boy mask on…LOL.
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“The solution is: let’s play from the same deck and without marked card(s)”
In order to do that whites would have to willingly forgo what they have practiced for HUNDREDS of years. Racism/White Supremacy. They are not willingly going to do that…. unless they are somehow motivated (for their own self interests) to do so. Clearly, we haven’t yet been able to MOTIVATE them to play from the SAME deck.
————————————————————————————————
I will say this about that. It is in no one’s self-interests to remove themselves from the top. For whatever y’all think about the so-called race card, this much is clear. As long as a minority can use any method to gain, they will.
Now, Whites are the minority in South Africa. They are no longer in the position of power. Not for some years now. Can anyone here believe that, were it in the best interests of the ruling Black population, they would voluntarily step down from the top in favour of the White population?
I can already here the roar of NO! from the majority of posters here.
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@ Matari
Please bear with me – came down with a bout of flu on the week-end. I’m perspiring profusely at the moment, among other things and promise to get back to you when I’m feeling a bit better.
Thanks!
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“one cannot use the metaphor “race card” because the oxygen that I breathe is in the forest I’m located and the other person is on a boat in the middle of ocean” – should read:
one cannot use the metaphor “race card” because the oxygen that I breathe, is the same in the forest I’m located, as it is for the other person who on a boat in the middle of ocean.
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Feel better Ubuntu…
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@ William: Hello Season’s Greetings.
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Ubuntu,
No problem. In your own time… no rush.
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I am an Italian American which is considered white , article states to own
and look at my past about slavery
what what what !!!!
being in slaved is wrong on every level
African Americans were not the only
in slaved and abused why does it always come down to that
own my past I had nor my ancestor
any responsible to claim
present day there is no African American in slaved by the white person
it’s used as an excuse to always find
a reason why they are not getting enough !!!! well enough is enough
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PPP, Yet, racial economic disparities are mostly unchanged and in some cases are growing. In 1963, blacks families earned 55 cents for every dollar earned by whites. In 2011, blacks earned 66 cents for every dollar earned by whites. The black unemployment rate averaged 11.6 percent between 1963 and 2012, more than double the white jobless rate over that time.
The black poverty rate of 55.1 percent was just over three times the white rate in 1959. It dropped to 32.2 percent in 1972. But since then, progress has been slow. In 2011, 27.6 percent of black households were in poverty — nearly triple the 9.8 percent white rate, according to the Census Bureau.
Why don’t you talk about reality and state some facts with your opinion because if you just speak about how you feel and don’t back it up with factual information then it just makes us think you are another typical racist. Bring us some studies showing how equal our African American countrymen and Women are doing as well or better than whites or how things have changed so much that in a few years we will all be equal. I have lived in both cultures and I can tell you my friend that they are far from equal and racism or supremacy is still a big part of the problem. Besides only a person who has not lived in another persons shoes, has not endured racism or disparity or poverty, would make a statement such as “enough is enough”. Are you saying that as a WHITE man you are speaking for the entire Black race when you say enough is enough, are you now the white/black spokesman for the African American community? Because I think we can save lots of time if we could just go to you when we want to know how an entire race of people should respond to oppression, slavery, inequality, poverty, crime, gangs, joblessness…Your like a profit of the people Dude.
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Why are rienforcing racism? You use the term “white” in a way that makes them the sole culpret for slavery. You mentioned yourself that there were african and arabs who sold slaves as well. The Germans did kill their own in the sense that the Nazis killed people of their own heritage and race, just as various african tribes and societies sold their own off into slavery. This is not a justification for the evil that occured from slavery, but the whole “white guilt” notion is just nonsense. People were sold into slavery. It seems ironic that today, the blame of an overdose is directed to the drug dealer and not the buyer, but when it comes to slavery, everyone blames the buyer and not the dealer.
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@ fienstien
Whites practised slavery in the name of race, benefited as a race and so get blamed as a race.
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@Abagond
Why do you let White trolls like Fienstien even comment? They get on my nerves and is one of the reasons why I don’t comment on your blog as much as I used to. But I still like your blog and the articles you write but not these White trolls
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What is it you want, Adeen. A choir to preach to? Is it not better to tolerate “error of opinion … where reason is left free to combat it.”?
To shut down this free exchange of ideas leads to places like Nazi Germany, Communist Russia.
Unless you are incapable of refuting.
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ppp:
I am an Italian American which is considered white
Odd how you had to put in that qualifier!
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Jimmy Shirley, if your going to add some REAL dialogue and not just simple and obvious denial and excuses then maybe you won’t be called out every time you play devils racist advocate. When whites of this country try to compare whites enslaving whites back in Ireland to American ships traveling halfway around the world to purchase millions of innocent people as slaves to rape, beat, hang, labor, torture, murder and so on you know you have someone who is not interested in real discussion but only wants to sugar coat the atrocities his white forefathers committed against so many. He doesn’t want to take any responsibility for the inequality and oppression that continues to this day. It’s easier to say, “It’s their own fault, they have it as good as any of us, slavery was 200 years ago, if they were white they would have been over it by now…” These are all comments and thoughts of a racist, pure and simple and the fact you don’t recognize this is because you were raised in a white world, by racist people more than likely. You would be one of the whites at the people auctions just over 100 years ago and you would also be in the barricade in front of the Mississippi school refusing to let a black student get a better education in the 60’s. Your not fooling anyone we know who you are…I am white and I have been welcomed with open arms for the most part on this site. I can ask any question I want and if I don’t agree I can state my mind without anyone calling me out but there is a big difference between me and you…I don’t deny or make light of slavery, clear and evident racism or the post traumatic oppression it has created within the African American community. This site was not created to argue with those who are incapable of seeing reality because of their narrow vision of the world, we are not going to convince a racist not to be a racist, only a life changing event or the sudden explosion of intelligence can do that…
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First off,
How convenient you people ignore that most of the racial atrocities committed against “Your people” were committed by yankees.
Second, you talk about equality? That is total BS. THERE is no equality!! In a tree, are the roots equal to the trunk? Vice versa? Are the branches equal to the roots/trunk? Are the leaves equal to the branches/trunk/roots? Of course not!
But they all know their place. Neither could exist without the other. YET!! You people would have us believe that class/place has no where to exist on the modern world. REALLY!!???
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Jimmy Shirley, so your opinion regarding inequality and race is that those who are oppressed should just fall in line and shut up. Do you know why the people of America revolted against England?…Inequality! No one is saying that classes should not exist or that one side should switch places with the other. What the people of this country who have had a ball and chain tied around their ankle while others slide by easily, want is to have a chance to succeed according to their effort just like those who have been more fortunate have had. No more, no less…EQUALITY, it’s easy to judge others looking in from the outside, it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback, talk is cheap, if you haven’t lived in ones shoes you shouldn’t be telling them how much their feet hurt…get it!
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You know not American History.
they rebelled NOT over the issue o equality, but what they perceived as unfair taxation, without representation. Never mind Great Britain had fought a seven year war with France to preserve the security of the frontier. Someone had to pay for it. The brash colonials really thought they should not.
In investing in the attempt at secession, they spouted high falootin principles. But the bottom line was they wanted no part in paying for their own security.
this had nada to do with your much vaunted “equality”.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
I see you are skilled in passing blame…oh it is not us it is those yankees!!!
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Taxation without representation is inequality, get on board dude!
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Slavery is inhumane, no human being should have to endure such pain. It makes no difference who wronged who in the past. We have to start now with the slaves held captive and free them. We must end slavery in communist countries and in Mexico. The sex slave trade is real and our Mexican brothers and sisters are being violated. Chinese and Korean people are imprisoned wrongfully to make our goods cheap and if they don’t work, they don’t eat. These people are all from the same race, the human race. We can still respect and enjoy each other’s cultures. We need to stop slavery now in honor of all those who suffered and lost their freedom. Our media hides the ugly truth and we need to take action to free these people. We don’t need to waste our time blaming or denying. We need to be the the ones to say it ends here! The violence ends now. The love and kindness for all people starts now. Forget war, how about operation freedom and kindness. We need to show everyone what America is really about. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL PEOPLE AND END SLAVERY IN THE WORLD NOW.
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Sorry, Jimmy, but you have a LOT to learn about Colonial America if you think that the citizens on this side of the pond “didn’t want to pau for their own security.” Every white man in the Colonies was mandated to be part of a militia under British rule. The only ones who could vote had to be ALL of the following: white, protestant, male, over 21 and deeded landholders. You’d better believe Inequality was a huge part of the revolt. Classicism and racism were already rampant due to the enslavement of Africans and Natives; these practices had long been established and were an integral part of the society and culture here in the first 200 years of settlement, since the corporations which established their plantations couldn’t do it without decimating the Natives. Unfortunately, whites were the figureheads in power here, so they kept everyone else down in am effort to both establish and maintain the appearance of equality with mainland Britain. Colonists considered themselves British, not separate from the motherland. The rebellion was a means to establish sovereignty in a situation where Lobsterbacks might show up at anyone’s door and declare martial law. How can a monarch some 3,000 miles away, with no direct knowledge of the citizens and culture of his Colonies, possibly act in the best interests of those “subjects?” That’s where the revolution came from. But those Colonists had an ingrained classicism and racism that asserted itself heartily in the effort to lift themselves out from underneath one tyrrany, while squarely continuing some of the absolute worst tyrrany against the “others” among them.
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@YouknowMe: Exactly. Estimates range from 700,000 to 2 million people currently trapped in sex slavery alone. When children go missing and a body isn’t found very often the child is being traded in the sex industry. These children and adults are kept in seclusion from their families and friends and completely stripped of their humanity. They are emotionally and physically tortured. It happens all over the world and in EVERY STATE of the US. Yet, many many people will deny it exists at all. Just ask any police officer, any FBI or CIA, any social worker. It is real and it is the filthiest example of human cruelty imaginable.
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@Jimmy, what Melanie said…
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You Know Me, thank you for your comment and you are very right, arguing the past is not necessarily a bad thing when done with the intention to heal or understand each other better but our number one concern should be for those who suffer now.
Melanie, thank you for your highly informative, poignant and intelligent response to Jimmy’s post. I’ll just refer all my answers to you.
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I suggest y’all pore through this website, which offers at least one man’s view of the British perspective, which is always fair to consider. http://www.redcoat.me.uk/
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
One mans perspective is not a fact of the matter. You open the door for people to pour in there own “perspectives” and have that be concluded as a factual account of events. Even more so you are trying to direct the debate/argument away from the main point of the post. Which tells me you had nothing when you walk in and have no point now.
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My brothers and sisters, I argue that; you will not get many ‘whites’ to understand what you want them to. The reason they cannot understand is because you are asking them to go against their cultural/biological make up. Whites evolved in a harsh resource depleted environment, where clan mentality, class structures, and violence were necessary to survive. On the other hand; blacks evolved in a tropical resource rich environment where sharing and the necessity for class distinctions, hoarding and violence were not necessary. As soon as we brothers and sisters stop trying to adopt this white mode of behavior no matter how enticing or appropriate it may seem to us, and start operating as a sharing, giving community again, we will be relegated to the bottom rung in this society; America is run by groups, not individuals. And since my claims have been generally based on evolutionary theory and inductive as opposed to deductive; my credentials should be stated. I am a graduate from the University of Pennsylvania with both a degree in psychology with a concentration in the biological basis of behavior, and religious studies. I am now in my first year at Princeton earning a double Ph.D in Psychology and social policy.-soooowooooooooppp!!!!
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I can tell you right now what another part of y’alls problem is. You DON’T want to have a conversation about race/slavery. You want to lecture us. YOU want to set the agenda. YOU think you have the RIGHT to stand to accuse US of what our ancestors did for y’alls ancestors.
if you want to talk, we can. You want us to not dismiss y’alls concerns, opinions, you can start by doing the same towards us. Is fair not fair?
@Sharina.
You said, One mans perspective is not a fact of the matter. You open the door for people to pour in there own “perspectives” and have that be concluded as a factual account of events. Even more so you are trying to direct the debate/argument away from the main point of the post. Which tells me you had nothing when you walk in and have no point now.”
Well, this is exactly what y’all have been doing. One man’s perspective of “slavery is inherently evil, all slaves were whipped and kept in chains, and the only variety of slavery that counts is of the African sort.”
How ego-centric. How self involved.
I suggest you all get over yourselves and just get on with living, improving your own lives and stop living in the past. And when you get rich enough, then you can afford to help others less fortunate. In the stead of y’all trying to force others to help those less fortunate. You are so concerned, do it yourselves.
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Kiwi
The point of doing this was to avoid being seen as “nonwhites”, which Italians were seen as 100 years ago. Being classified as nonwhite confers second-class citizenship. And Italian-Americans knew just how bad it was to be black, so they had every reason to assimilate into white society.
I am seeing this more and more. Of the Italians I knew growing up, most were on the peripheral of the social scene – but never fully immersed. Known and adored for their seemingly strong European ‘difference’ by the ladies and i’m sure other things that I couldnt possibly appreciate. There was a strong need to tell others, particularly minorities, that they were ‘white’ but from what I saw, it was they themselves never seemed fully convinced. The ‘prize’ of a ‘white english’ girlfriend was held too high in esteem from them and never made me convinced either that they truthfully believed what they said.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“Well, this is exactly what y’all have been doing.”—Ya’lll haven’t been doing anything of the sort and I think if you take your head out of your azz and read what I said then you will notice that. Though your response seems to indicate a monolith idea of what we think.
“I suggest you all get over yourselves and just get on with living, improving your own lives and stop living in the past. And when you get rich enough, then you can afford to help others less fortunate. In the stead of y’all trying to force others to help those less fortunate. You are so concerned, do it yourselves.”—I would suggest you do the same as you have been whining for days now on end about what this person on a blog said or did. I would call that the pot calling the kettle black except it is only you doing this and you lacking the ability to read what anyone really said (I am waiting for you to point to where Abagond or anyone said ALL whites). So I guess it is better to say “when you assume you make an ass out of U and ME.” Had you took that little quote to mind when you responded to me then you would not have assumed what my life or anyone esles is like. I actually do charitable works every week. More depending on my time. What is it you do beside whine or make an azz of yourself? 🙂
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“I actually do charitable works every week. More depending on my time. What is it you do beside whine or make an azz of yourself?”
Given that Southern people all across the country who proudly display their Confederate heritage by wearing manifestations of the Confederate Battle Flag are targets of discrimination and bigotry, because of the lies, distortions, myths and other falsehoods regarding the whole issue of involuntary African servitude, I devote my spare tyme to debunking those very same lies with documented truth.
People have been fired, suspended from school, told to remove their tattoos and/or otherwise gotten into trouble because of that symbol of nobility, the Confederate Battle Flag.
Any idea just how hard it is when truth confronts willful ignorance? So many people believe the sort of distortions shown here, just like they believe lincoln was the Black man’s friend and that he freed the slaves. It is so hard to fight ignorance at this level of brainwashing.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“I can tell you right now what another part of y’alls problem is.”–Take a good long hard look at this quote. This is your problem and where you have basically messed up your chances of anyone wanting to have a decent conversation with you. You managed to do exactly what you have imagined others have done to you. Again with the pass the buck attitude (its not me…its you. Boohoo).
Here is some lengthy advice if you are looking for you if you are looking for anyone to actually take you serious.
1. comprehend what you read. You are on a tangent that has little or nothing to do with this post. In fact you are an example of what he means by the post at this point.
2. Take your head out of your azz. You have basically had it up there since you first started commenting and it seems to be going deeper.
3. Point to where abagond says all whites. I see people bring it up but my curiosity is getting the best of me and perhaps you can point to where it says such.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“Given that Southern people all across the country who proudly display their Confederate heritage by wearing manifestations of the Confederate Battle Flag are targets of discrimination and bigotry, because of the lies, distortions, myths and other falsehoods regarding the whole issue of involuntary African servitude, I devote my spare tyme to debunking those very same lies with documented truth.”—-Yet I have seen little or none of these supposed FACTS you claim to have presented.
“Any idea just how hard it is when truth confronts willful ignorance? So many people believe the sort of distortions shown here, just like they believe lincoln was the Black man’s friend and that he freed the slaves. It is so hard to fight ignorance at this level of brainwashing.”—-I don’t know. How hard is it? I find it funny how some people believe they have come on to the truth and freed themselves from brainwashing only to find themselves latched to a new form of brainwashing. That is the type of ignorance that seems to be most hard to fight. Though you will be surprised how many blacks in here do not see Lincoln as some type of friend to the blacks.
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@Jimmy, you are the typical conservative white republican in this country. You blame the victim and not the RAPIST. You see since day one who has had the power and the money; WHITES. Who had motive; WHITES. Who had the means to travel halfway around the world to purchase human beings; WHITES. Who still has the power to this day; WHITES. When have you ever known a person with all the power to be the victim in any case; NEVER!!!
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@Jimmy, you want proof? Look at all the photographs of lynched human beings, set on fire, skinned alive. Where are the pictures of whites being hung by blacks? Where are the pictures of whites being set on fire by large groups of blacks? Look at all the pictures of blacks being shot with water cannons, bitten by dogs, children smashed in the head by a white policemans billy club, crosses burning on lawns (how dare they use God as their tool of hate), where are the white hate clubs, etc. Where are the pictures of whites being water cannoned by blacks? Where are the photos of white children being smashed in the head by black police? Where are the black hate clubs? There are over 1,000 hate organizations in America and 90% of them are white based, less than 1% are black based. The whites make up 64% of the population and blacks make up 14%. So shouldn’t those hate club numbers reflect the percentage of the population or is it that whites just have more hate towards other races than blacks…Let the facts speak for them self and take away all of our bias…By the way, I found I. Williams swooooop comment at the end of his credentials hilarious!!
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Forgive me for the typos in my last posting; im in and out the do’. In reference to that last posting, I would add my understanding of the basic argument between the two modes of thought on this blog. The Black argument: whites; as would be defined as a social classification, came to Africa, enslaved our ancestors, benefited from the forced labor, and until this very day continue to benefit from the capital generated from slavery, enjoy the social and resource opportunities while this same constructed notion of class which justified our enslavement continues to shut us out of these very same resources and opportunities.
The White argument: You cant blame us, we’re only human. All humans at one time or the other have enslaved other humans.
While the black argument is a statement of fact, but not necessarily an argument in this form, the white argument is in fact an argument but fallacious on at least two different accounts. 1) the ‘two wrongs make a right’ argument is a a logical fallacy; although this statement seems to validate the ‘environmental determination’ theory in that whites believe the propensity to enslave other humans is genetic. 2) No, all humans, or civilizations, cultures etc. did not practice slavery, so I reject the premise. Since many people have made this claim on this blog, and therefore the burden of proof is on them; I challenge them to find documentation to validate such a claim.
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@Jimmy, you are exposing how corrupt your point of view is by your use of the Ya’ll term. Every single person has respected you except me and I’m white, however you have done everything in your power to restrain yourself from using more derogatory statements, evident by your constant use of the ya’ll term. After reading the last post from these evidently much more intelligent people I would quit while you are behind because you are clearly outgunned intellectually…please take your misguided and misinformed and unsubstantiated claims elsewhere.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
‘But the bottom line was they wanted no part in paying for their own security.
this had nada to do with your much vaunted “equality”.’
uh, 2nd amendment?
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@ I. Williams, your previous post about the white culture is unfortunately true I believe. As a matter of fact I have said this very thing for years, just not so eloquently. I have observed my entire life how whites create cliques based on status and never on character. I have observed other races or cultures and their strong family unit which doesn’t stop at the immediate family but the entire family line from Grandfather to second and third cousins, no distinction. Whites generally only participate with the immediate family past a certain point and you have to twist their arms to even get that. Of course this does not mean every family, each is different but as the rule this is true. Black, Hispanic and Asian races will stand together to defend each other from the authorities, not whites we tend to judge the person guilty instead of innocent, maybe our way of not feeling guilty for looking the other way. Whites value money over all else and it is the way of our culture. Slaves are a commodity not human beings, the land we stole from the Indians was our Manifest Destiny not genocide, two nuclear bombs dropped on innocent women and children was self defense not a war crime. We are taught to be capitalist from the very inception of thought. The culture you speak of in Africa sounds beautiful and I know little or nothing about it but I would imagine it is similar to cultures all over the world where family, neighbors, people, healthcare, food, education, equality and life in general are the key motivators and not money. I often dream of Americans adopting a culture where brotherhood, sharing, family, food, education, charity and volunteering is our motivation and our commitment to society.
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Completely agree with you on the generalities, William. I’ve certainly seen this in action. One of the reasons I’m still single is the way so many men I’ve dated ultimately fit this pattern. I don’t tolerate relationships with people who pigeonhole others for shallow reasons. I’m concerned with the content of their character, and unfortunately those men of character which I have found did not have the same feeling for me as I did for them. Others had some seriously messed up ideas and priorities.
Extends to my circle of friends as well. Sometimes just had to stop associating with certain people as their true beliefs and bigotry were exposed.
(And thanks for your kind words to me, too.)
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@ William
It pains me to see you sell yourself short. Please don;t do that and don’t let anyone make you feel like you are less. Not knowing something is ok and it is ok to admit it because it leaves room for you to learn it. I don’t see myself as more or less than anyone in here. You did just fine in your responses.
@Melanie S.
Awesome responses. I do agree with William
@l. williams
I want to share something I learned a long time ago in asking for sources on these boards. Ask for proof and you usually get one of a few different responses. 1. you get no response. They disappear. 2. You get a source that is no even credible and find yourself in disbelief that they even chose it. 3. You get the changing of the subject. 4. You get ad hominem attacks. The list does go on, but I will stop there as it is wrong of me not to allow you to discover this yourself.
If you are new then welcome. If not then I apologize and look forward to your commentary.
@ v8driver
Hey! How have you been?
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Why does this post still get so many comments a few years after it was made?
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@miss sharina it’s hard to comparatively quantify; however, my perception is that i am well, thank you!
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@reggie jacobs
Because you have trolls that ran across it and have decided to comment under the idea that because it is so old that no one will say anything back and they can simply get by with saying what they want.
@v8driver
🙂 good to hear.
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I see
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Given that Southern people all across the country who proudly display their Confederate heritage by wearing manifestations of the Confederate Battle Flag are targets of discrimination and bigotry, because of the lies, distortions, myths and other falsehoods regarding the whole issue of involuntary African servitude, I devote my spare tyme to debunking those very same lies with documented truth.
You’re joking right? If not, you are one deluded fellow!
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“They were no more selling “their own” than, say, “Europeans” were killing “their own” during the Holocaust.”
Like what does this sentence supposed to mean. Iam no Jew but if you are killing your neighbor in a concentration camp. Doesnt that mean you are killing your own people. Or do Jews feel that it is so that Jews belong to their own group and are not part of any nationality in say europe. Then it would make sense
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So, how many black people regret the European whites contact back then with primitive Africa (Excuse me if I call it that!) Regret our civilisation, want to get back to basics? Not many I bet. Not those driving Cadillacs and BMWs, living the professional dream life in the European based cultured society they ENJOY today.
All civilizations have VERY cruel periods as did the British Empire and similr European and American regimes,but NON more cruel and inhumane than African justice, even as seen today. A Nigerian friend told me of a woman being stoned to death publicly in his village and set alight for an affair with a married man, just TEN years ago. It’s not unusual, it’s instant street justice, not lawful I would guess.
Many of you need to get the big fat racist cliche anti white chips off your shoulders and REALLY try to fit in all of us as humans together and not fight every historic battle right here right now in 2010/2014.
Or go back to say South Africa, where despite the seemingly Demi God like Nelson Mandela and his government, see poor black children live and die on the street, that is TODAY! Ditto almost every other African nation with civil wars, coups and quasi military factions seemingly on every street corner.
Still a very screwed up country South Africa, unsafe and unfair.
So where is it FAIR in 2014? No where 100%. But give us Euro’s a break, most non-Europeans head voluntarily for Europe or North America/Canada because the white culture is 1000 x fairer and offers 100,000 x the opportunities of where they originated from, NOT due to slavery, but due to how the civilization grew, formed better laws and the populations developed in Europe and it did NOT in Africa. Dispute that fact.
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Dispute what fact? You didn’t give any.
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@origin nice post
@paul i’ll let you know how it goes over there!
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@Paul, your comments have just justified and explained everything this post and several other post are attempting to prove. Congratulations you just proved every single point ever posted on Abagond as to why Blacks have had it so hard to this day and demonstrated the attitude from white supramacy they have endured since the day we forced them into western life. Take a look around you, if you haven’t noticed capiltalism only works for those who worship money and pay no heed to human emotion, socially it is a huge failure on all fronts. Family values, racism, religion, education, crime, foriegn relations, etc, etc..Secondly, you mentioned Africa and it’s problems, Africa did not have the epidemics, social disparagy, religous factions and so on prior to being settled by white nations. Africa was a peaceful lonely place minding it’s own business and not until white men decided that the native people needed to be saved from Satan, modernized, industrialized did Africa just become another screwed up mess left after whites failed to fix something that wasn’t broke. Whites brought disease, religous persecution, environmental destruction, created the haves and the have nots or inequality, etc..Before colonization they were peaceful tribes living among each other since the existence of man but again the white man screwed it all up! By the way Paul did you graduate High School?
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“They were no more selling “their own” than, say, “Europeans” were killing “their own” during the Holocaust.” I really liked that statement, the reason white people assume Africans all look the same is pure ignorance.
During the early stages of slavery people from ethnic groups such as the Akan and Hausa people sold others from the Igbo, Yoruba, Ga and so on …
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Even though I agree with Williams statement about “no more selling their own”, this is another William and not the same William who posted above this one addressing Paul. There are now two Williams posting so from now on I will post as William the Conqueror…sounds so cool, don’t you think?
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Exactly why are people still posting these stupid redundant idiocies about ‘Africans’ selling ‘their own people’ into slavery?? Haven’t there been enough posts here at this very site to quash this foolishness for the a-historical, ignorant, purely ideological crap it is? Don’t get me wrong here: the argument has been a foolish argument (claim, assertion) for fifty years OUTSIDE of this site, and anyone making this claim proves their own lack of knowledge of history anyway–but laying that fact aside for the sake of this discussion, even in the specific intellectual ecosystem of this site of Abagond’s, the foolishness of this claim has been thoroughly negated both by Abagond’s cogent and incisive column statements, and by several readers’ comments, including my own.
Yet, the site, and the site’s old, old Sept 2010 column focusing on the argument that Africans enslaved themselves, not Anglos, continues to draw restatements, reiterations, re mumbles and re-slurrings of this VERY SAME DUMB, A-HISTORICAL CLAIM. It seems to be a combination of the fact that new commenters are not taking the time to read the previously existing comments, (not to mention are not reading Abagond’s original column, which ought to have cleared up the reasons, motivations, and defense mechanism that stand behind this flawed Anglo claim), and not thinking through the logic of what they are saying–the illogical points of the claim are, again, thoroughly exposed by Abagond in the first place.
Is it a lack of attention span? Is it perhaps that there is yet another explanation behind the persistence of this claim–that it is the evidence of a MENTAL condition? Do Anglos have a psychological complex going here in the classic psychoanalytic sense? A complex of defense mechanisms that are not only an ideological cover for their guilt over not ‘slavery’ but the TRANSATLANTIC CORPORATE SLAVE TRADE? Is it actually in fact also a complex of psycho-defensive projection and deflection neuroses that function to hide their own id crimes from their superego’s self recrimination by projection of their crime onto the victims and deflection of responsibility away from the finite factual evidence of a crime, finite evidence that leads back to them?
I am beginning to think that there are indeed some deeper psychological issues at play here. My advice is, READ THE ORIGINAL COMMENTS by Abagond. Don’t you all make me have to re-post my own thorough academic explication here. You don’t want that, because Abagond is nicer than me.
Prof Rayfield A. Waller
Wayne State University
Department of Africana Studies
Detroit
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@Rayfield A. Waller
You basically hit the nail on the head when you said
” It seems to be a combination of the fact that new commenters are not taking the time to read the previously existing comments, (not to mention are not reading Abagond’s original column, which ought to have cleared up the reasons, motivations, and defense mechanism that stand behind this flawed Anglo claim), and not thinking through the logic of what they are saying–the illogical points of the claim are, again, thoroughly exposed by Abagond in the first place.”
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Sharina and Rayfield, one of the things you must remember is that most of the people who comment on this thread negatively are not interested in real debate or education in regards to how other feel about their experiences. These people are just racist looking to judge something they know nothing about, judge people they know only from media sensationalism and react to things they don’t understand like their mommies and daddies did, with hate and ignorance. That is why this thread continues, I still respond because I have always felt a responsibility to respond to racist out of some underlining guilt given the fact that my race seems to be the only real racist on this planet. This thread also is the only one that repeatedly shows up on my email when someone new comments…And Rayfield I believe you are right about the anglo race being a bit touched in the head, at least half of them anyway, believe me my family is full of crazy ignorant racist and they have zero rationality or logic.
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While it is true that Europeans did not DIRECTLY capture Africans in Africa, and instead bought them from other Africas in Africa. More research needs to be done regarding the qualifications necessary for an African to be sold by another African to the Europeans?
Because its not at all clear.
My own research indicates the African side of the trade was highly organized with charters, monopolies, smuggling… all the dynamics of contemporary trade along with the associated problems and disputes they generate.
I strongly doubt the Africans doing the selling sold their own people; unless they were criminals or carriers of some other social or physical deficit.
So at the end of the day, if you are a black person in the Western hemisphere, you don’t really know where you came from even if you know it was somewhere in Africa.
The Africans in Africa probably don’t know either. And even if they did, they probably would not tell you or tell the truth.
Simple logic retards a tribe from selling its own members. Therefore, I suspect tribes sold members of other tribes.
The Europeans who bought them probably kept track of such data and have all the answers in some dusty archive in Europe.
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I am a bit humbled both by the truth of what you say, and by your honesty and frankness. In fact the honesty is downright impressive, and I appreciate your determination to respond to racism out of your own chosen sense of racial responsibility (although personally I don’t know how far I believe the idea that the Anglo descendants of the slavocracy are truly responsible for a system that they did not participate in directly but only benefit from structurally where their ancestors benefited by direct primitive accumulation). As for just the truth of what you say, yes, you are right, and it is a bit like you are tapping me on the shoulder and saying, hey, focus These people who post the more ignorant comments AREN’T interested in reasoned debate. You’re obviously right, William. I am perhaps tossing ping pong balls at the wind.
Much more interesting is something you exemplify and that you are reminding me of: a comment that I read, a comment made I think by Anglo historian Taylor Branch, author of a magnificent civil rights study, his book, “Parting the Waters” and a major contributor to the landmark civil rights and Black American history documentary, “Eyes on the Prize”. Branch commented once that systematic racism will never really be rooted out of American society unless ‘Whites’ decide to defeat it, because it is actually their historical role to eradicate what was put in place by their own ancestors. The further implication of this is that the oppressed should not have to carry the overwhelming and inter-generational burden of changing America all alone.
There must be race traitors (‘Whites’/Anglos who betray their own considerable but narrow racial interests) willing to participate in liberation. There must be Anglos who want to reject ‘Whiteness’ in favor of a more full humanity for themselves than is offered by racialism. Otherwise, the common humanity Blacks and Anglos share on these shores, not to mention our common histories and common genetic heritage! –Cannot be fully explored, enjoyed, and experienced. I embrace this idea fully as a man in a male supremacist society. If men don’t renounce male privilege, it won’t easily disappear from society. I reject male supremacy because I don’t wish to live inside the prison of ‘masculinity’ as if it were a sentence to serve all my life. Class suicide, race suicide, gender suicide (as a heterosexual I reject gendercentrism in the cause of opposing hetero-sexist discrimination against gays and lesbians).
These forms of ‘suicide’ are some of the most useful tools in what I think is the responsibility all of us have right now, despite the distraction of reality TV and ‘smarty-phones’: finishing the 200 year struggle in North America for human liberation (the Constitution, the abolitionist movement, the Amistad, Aquiano, Margaret Sanger, Frederick Douglass, “The Woman Rebel” newspaper whose motto was, ‘No Gods, No Masters’, Ida B. Wells, Harriett Tubman, and the women’s suffrage movements, Joe Hill, the Union movements, and the International Workers of the World, Mario Savio and the free speech movement, Dolores Huerta and the Latino rights movement, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, The American Indian Movement’s Russel Means, King’s struggle for civil rights and public access, Malcolm X and the Black power movement, the Weathermen, Stonewall and the gay rights movement, SANE-FREEZE, immigrants’ rights movements, abortion rights, and the struggle against environmental racism). This history is unique to America and is the primary legacy of all Americans, all of us– the liberation of all Americans from the nightmare of our own anti-human histories in this country. Perhaps that is really a more worthy issue to be thinking about, than this endless chatter over Blacks (Africans) and who sold whom into which form of slavery and when. At any rate, thanks, William, for being there, for being an example. And thanks, Sharina, for the encouragement you offer.
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Dear Rayfield, I love reading your comments, so eloquent, poignant, filled with emotion and so much knowledge. If I am not mistaken I can hear your beautiful accent while reading your literature. Bravo, bravo…
Thank you very much for your kind words and what you said about whites needing to break their “allegiance” to their race in order for us as a nation to really eliminate racism and restore or create equality is spot on. The list of races or groups fighting for freedom, civil rights, equality, etc all have one common denominator…their oppressor is the white man, this is where my motivation comes from; guilt, shame, anger, frustration, these are the other underlining emotions that fuel my disgust for the portion of my race that remains racist. Maybe God has blessed me with wisdom, maybe my interacial family has given me experiences that help me think logically and ethically or maybe it’s true that 49% of the white race is just pure ignorant. Either way I feel blessed and I never waiver when it comes to human rights and people, they always come first whenever I am faced with anything that requires my actions or opinion. Take care my friend…
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William the Conqueror
these are the other underlining emotions that fuel my disgust for the portion of my race that remains racist.
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William, are you claiming you are NOT a racist?
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I claim that it doesn’t take a genius or empathetic person to acknowledge that groups of people have been wronged horribly by another group of people, who seem to be at the head of the table at each and every one of these atrocities. That is what I claim. Because my skin color happens to be the same color as said group I feel a sense of guilt and remorse, as any good, sympathetic and intelligent person would. My journey is to change the world, starting with myself. Have I had racist thoughts and made a few racist remarks in my life, yes, a few, but I was very young and I immediately knew what I did was wrong and I was being as ignorant as any other racist at the time. I let the media dictate my emotions and I judged an entire group of people by the actions of a few criminals. However life’s journey is one of growing, learning, changing and hopefully influencing others for the better. I have been so fortunate that I was raised by a father who never once in his life have I heard say a racist word, not one. He is kind and loving and respects all life on this planet. God taught him how to love and he gets it, he’s not a scholar or even a college graduate but he knew exactly what God was saying to him when he read the Bible. I’m not saying that the Bible is the book for everyone’s enlightenment but has worked for my Father and myself. I still have anger in regards to certain groups of people, races if you must, but now most of it is directed towards the people in this world who refuse to show respect and fight for equality for those this country and many of it’s people have hurt and who to this day are still paying for those atrocities in one way or another. I think about the definition of a racist all the time and I have learned a lot by our conversations on Abagond. I will never be a perfect person, I will make mistakes and I will have a hard time trying not to see the world as groups or races of people as I fight to change myself and the small world around me but the fact of the matter is I will never stop trying. I will ask questions of others, I will respect what they have to say and when they tell me about their lives, what they have endured, how they have suffered or how angry they are…I will not deny these emotions, I will not make light of them and I will never dictate to them how they should feel or pretend for one second that I know what it’s like to be them, because that is impossible!
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William, you did NOT answer the question.
I have another question.
Are you a white person?
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@thwack:
Yeah, t., the implication, heavily implied thus far, is that William the C is ‘White’
I prefer to use the more culturally meaningful if not all that genetically accurate, ‘Anglo’ to designate the people we erroneously call ‘White’.
Think about it: there ain’t no ‘White’ people! Where would ‘White’ people be from? Whiteland? White Island (as opposed to the Isle of Wight)? Or perhaps Whitonia? No. No such places exist. Are they ‘Caucasian’? That’s senseless– if you look at the particular ethnic identity that word supposedly refers to, there are only a few thousand of them in existence today, if there were ever many more than that anyway even in the 1700’s.
A perhaps racist and certainly daft, definitely scientifically unskilled 1700’s German philosopher named Christoph Meiners re-purposed the term ‘Caucasian’. He ripped the term off from the European geography of the Caucasus mountain region of Northern Europe. The term at that time literally referred to fifty distinct ethnic groups. Writing in the 1780’s, Meiners began the pop cultural tradition of using this term, apropos of nothing real (no real anthropological, physiological, genetic–genetics didn’t exist yet–or even cultural basis). Meiners in other words had no scientific substantiation other than his own desire to arbitrarily create a taxonomy of ‘races’. To his mind, there were only two races on Earth: Caucasoids (what he designated the light skinned race) and Mongoloids (what he designated the dark skinned race). He called Caucasoids those with “the whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin” indicative of their superior sensitivity and greater moral virtue. By this reasoning (hey, look at the WORD: ‘Cauc-Asian’??) the Japanese or as they called themselves, NIPPONESE, were the most pure ‘Caucasians’, the ultimate ‘White’ people, most civilized, and most sensitive, right? Sound crazy so far? It gets worse.
A huge problematic in Meiners’ personal taxonomy (a taxonomy is a system of categorization) was its lack of any logical applicability other than through ‘race’—or rather, the arbitrariness of skin color. His category encompassed as I mentioned, about fifty distinct ethnic identities, and even worse for his logic, it also happens to encompass peoples as far flung from the Caucasus region as the Japanese, Berbers and various other North Africans such as Bedouins, the Indus-Asiatics, and Asioids. That is probably one reason that Meiners proclaimed that there are only two races—it was the only way he could maintain even the veneer of scientific validity (even if not soundness).
Yep. Logic can be made to fake truth by jiggling your premises to create your own valid conclusions that follow from your jiggled premises. To wit: the history of Northeastern Europe (and of the Caucasus) is a history written in the steel and blood of millions of Mongol invaders, settlers, and immigrants who washed over Europe between 1200 and 1700. So if we look at the populations that Meiners claimed were the ‘White’ races, they would have included Turkic, Semitic, Kalmyk, Asiatic, and even Mongoloid peoples! He had to account for the basic human diversity of this planet that exists no matter where you focus the jaundiced eye of racism and so he designated ‘dark’ or ‘yellow’ Europeans as ‘dirty whites’. No kidding. Go read this hatter of the mad: The Outline of History of Mankind (1785).
Many other racist pseudo-scientists, such as Julien Virey and Johann Blumenbach came along throughout the rest of the 18th and all of the 19th centuries to clean up the awkward mess that was Meiners’ taxonomy, theorizing a proliferation of sub-races, sub-categories, skin color differentals, and hierarchies of ‘racial’ identity based on the lesser-to-greater ‘civilized’ racial characteristics, but all essentially referring to the mundanity of skin color. This activity, beginning here in my own focus with Meiners in the 1700’s, came hard on the heels of the TransAtlantic Triangle Slave Trade of the 1500’. Of course. And of course it coincided with the desire to invent ‘race’, an invention that first arose in the 1550’s to justify genocide against Caribbean natives and the mass kidnapping and chattel dehumanization of Africans; all that clearly lay behind Meiners’ project.
These pseudoscientists of the 17 and 1800’s served also to set the stage for a bogus justification of Europe’s long-running virulent anti-Semitism (see historical references to ‘The Dreyfus Affair’—1894-1906), leading up to Hitler’s 20th century dopey bifurcation of the peoples of the German nation into ‘pure’ Aryan Germans and Jewish-Semitic Germans, the latter of whom he asserted should be fitted into a sub-human category deserving of mass extermination; but that’s another, related story. Suffice it to say that all this mushrooming talk of ‘race’ had more of a political purpose than scientific legitimacy.
The cure for all this madness, a madness which of course has been handed down to all of us here in America in the 21st century, is the book “The Mismeasure of Man” (Norton and Co., 1981) by the brilliant and articulate Harvard anthropologist, paleontologist, and historian of science, the late Stephen Jay Gould. Gould argues that most racial conceptions of the human race are arbitrary, bigoted, and are erroneously posed as biology when they are in fact political and economic ideologies.
I don’t write that racial meme, ‘White’ down on paper without using quotation marks. If I myself were ‘white’ in America (a mundane description of the arbitrary biological detail of skin color) or even if I were ‘(W)hite’ in America—i.e., offered the possibility of ‘(W)hite’ supremacist privileges, I would be very seriously angry at being caged inside such a mediocre and meaningless taxonomic restraint. I would turn down the privileges because I would have to pay for those privileges with my own humanity. I would challenge America and any Americans who uncritically apply that term to me to explain what in the hell they mean by it. My humanity, yours, William’s, and my young daughter’s (she’s ‘Black’ and Puerto Rican), are far more complex, more profound, and most importantly more diverse and from many more places than racial categories could ever fully account for.
Knowing in fact that when you ask William whether he is ‘White’ or not you are not really asking him about his identity but are in fact asking him to willingly participate in a Kabuki dance of essentially pop cultural and political ignorance, I would advise William to respond by asking, “Are YOU?” Your response to THAT question, particularly if you are ‘OTHER’ or ‘Black-African American’ as the dumb government forms would have it, will say a lot more about you than your question is asking of him.
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@ Rayfield A. Waller: Thank you for that explanation. Many vague references have been made to the invalidity of the constructs of “race,” throughout this and numerous other discussions, but your comments here are the best and most meaningful I’ve encountered. The terms you reference are so loaded with various meanings (including “Mongoloid” being used to refer to people with what we now know is Down’s Syndrome) that it is absolutely imperative that we go back to the beginning and learn where the mess began: pseudoscience.
I am picking up Gould’s book right away. And I think your suggested response from William is perfect.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Rayfield A. Waller
Yeah, t., the implication, heavily implied thus far, is that William the C is ‘White’
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Hmmm… interesting.
“heavily implied” is no good because it requires an assumption (even though small) to produce a logical true; therefore it would not hold up in court.
And we are always in court as long as I am in court.
And under the system of racism white supremacy, nonwhite people are ALWAYS in court.
They may not know why but Ignorantia juris non excusat
Therefore, I will rephrase my question for William:
Your honor, may I approach the witness?
*thank you*
William the Conqueor, do you KNOW if you are a white person?
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@Rayfield and Melanie, I could read your writing all day long, there is a sexiness reading such brilliant words when they come from two obviously beautiful women. Thank you both for having my back. It feels really good learning so much and making new friends on this site. I absolutely enjoy reading everyone’s view of the subjects here, debating some, scolding others. This is a great site and so many of you are, if I can borrow a line from Good Will Hunting, “wicked smart”. Rayfield have you ever had anything published?
As for Thwack; you asked me if I considered myself not to be a racist? Your damn right I am not a racist. Racism is believing a persons skin color dictates his character. Racism is prejudging a person because the way he looks or dresses. Racism is acting without remorse or without the passion to learn about others who are different from yourself. People and their feelings are at the forefront of every decision I make; people come first. The good thing about my philosophy is that I really enjoy the company of people so it’s not difficult for me. Every single person I meet gets my utmost respect, their skin color, social status, gender, religion, etc means absolutely nothing to me. Whether they lose that respect by their actions is another thing but that has nothing to do with their race, gender, religion, etc..However I am prejudice, prejudice against mean and hateful people. Bullies, racist, people who abuse children, women and animals, wealthy snobs who lack empathy for the environment their greed destroys and so on. These are the people who I have disdain for. All others I would be honored to call my brother or sister and strive to learn more about them and in turn learn more about myself. You are damn straight i am not a racist, if anything I am an ANTI-RACIST!…Superhero to all the nerdy white guys out there trying to make a difference while occasionally putting our feet in our mouth…LOL.
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I take the fifth…
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@ William The Conqueor: Uhmm….. William, Rayfield is a man. You said two beautiful women.
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William The Conqueor
I take the fifth…
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OK so lets review:
1. We have a man who says he is NOT a racist.
but
a) He will not tell us if he is a white person
and
b) He doesn’t know if he is a white person
So how is William QUALIFIED to participate in ANY discussion of race or racism with us?
Would you let someone work on your teeth if
a) he will not tell you if he is a dentist
and
b) he doesn’t know if he is a dentist?
If your roof was leaking would you hire a person to fix it who:
a) will not tell you if he is a roofer?
b) Does not know if he is a roofer?
William, I have another question for you,
do you think black people are stupid?
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My father used to say, ‘nothing more can be asked of a man than that he be man enough to say he’s got things to work on in himself and wants to be better.’ If only Americans, all of us, could commit to that, we could live up to the promise of this New World culture.
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@Rayfield A. Waller
Very wise words.
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Huh?? William is in court now? Are you the jury, judge, and prosecutor?
Then allow me to be a defense attorney– I argue ad damnum, that if you feel the accused is guilty of a crime. What harm in real terms has HE done to YOU or to ME? What exactly is he charged with–the suspicion of being an Anglo? Genetically speaking then, given the reality of American miscegenation, which of us shall escape whipping, as Hamlet would ask?
Do we affix blame to individuals, or to historical policies and systematic practices? What do you suggest as ad quod damnum? What is the remedy? A mensa et thoro–Divorce? Should we expel our Anglo brothers and sisters, force all the so-called ‘White’ people, (assuming this court even sees William the C. AS ‘White’), to leave the premises and offer us quid pro quo for our sufferings? On what basis? What laws has HE broken other than possibly the law of inheritance? Is there a statute of limitations involved in this? Hadn’t we African Americans–Blacks, hadn’t we better hope so??
Because If we demand quid pro quo then how do we assess damage and set a material value on the means to make us and ALL who have suffered whole? If only we among Americans deserve reparations then which of us? All of us? Why wouldn’t that include Jewish-Americans suffering anti-Semitism–for example the lynching of Leo Frank–while we suffered segregation after the Reconstruction, and what of Italian-Americans who after Black victims, were the most frequently lynched ethnicity in the south, and what of Chinese-Americans forced into slavery and death in building the railroad system in the West, and again, what about women? What of Mexican-Americans murdered, raped, robbed, and illegally deported in California throughout the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s??
May it please the court, I remind this chamber that The ‘Citizens Committee for Coordination for Unemployment Relief’ in Los Angeles County declared in the 1930’s that ‘their’ Anglo county contained 400,000 “deportable aliens,” whose jobs, in the Anglos’ words, “We need for needy citizens.” Two million Americans of Mexican ancestry were forcibly ‘repatriated’ to Mexico in the 30’s, despite data suggesting that 1.2 million were born in the United States. 400,000 Latino United States citizens or legal residents were forced to leave their homes in the state of California. Do you plan Mr. Prosecutor, to speak for them too in your opening statement? Is William culpable for all of them, and for you and I too, because he is, under your suspicion for being ‘White’?
What of native Americans? Shouldn’t we HOPE there is a statute of limitations in that thorny case that implicates we African Americans as well?Do African Americans owe Native Americans compensation for the period after the civil war when we participated in driving them off their land and killing them when we served in the U.S. cavalry on the Western Frontier at places like Fort Davis, patrolling the Mexican border, mounting attacks on Mexicans and fighting the Apache? What of the the Blacks who served in Cuba in the Spanish American War? The Blacks in the 9th and 10th cavalry who served with General Sheridan and carried out the racist, oppressive, and murderous policies of the US along the border of the Western Frontier? How to account here for Blacks’ service in the Philippines enforcing the policies of genocide and ‘White’ supremacy in Manila? To be sure, some Black soldiers refused, some deserted, but should only the descendants of those who this court can verify did desert be the only Blacks spared this court’s judgment of Black guilt?
If the court please, I submit this: the Blacks who served under Sherman when he invaded Mexico, as well as Blacks serving in Cuba deserted in the largest numbers recorded prior to those who deserted and rebelled against their commanders in Vietnam. Is this not evidence that those Blacks who did not desert are guilty of being accomplices to crimes against humanity? Do their descendants then deserve to be charged with a crime? This raises the question doubly then, of Blacks who served in Vietnam and participated in the murder of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian civilians, does it not?
How does the prosecutor propose that this court decide the issue of identity? Who in America IS Black and thus presumably innocent prima facie? Full Blacks? Mulattoes? Quadroons? Octeroons? If William the C. can prove a third Italian ancestry then can’t he argue to the court that the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the American Immigration Act of 1924 restricting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe while liberalizing immigration from Northern Europe were criminal legislative precedents making the discrimination against Italian Americans that swept across the US for fifty years a more likely outcome? I submit as evidence the anti-Italian lynchings and race riots against Italian Americans in the 1890’s in cities such as New Orleans (where one of the largest mass lynchings in American history took place), in New York, and various southern cities and counties, and including the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and the hundreds of Italian-American citizens herded into concentration camps during WWII, while, ironically, Italian fascists brought to the US as prisoners of war by the US government were treated more humanely than our own Italian-American citizens!
I submit, in all rationality and love for justice, that it matters not whether William can or cannot prove Italian or Jewish ancestry, but that merely as an American citizen he has a right to appeal to the principle of cor unum–one heart, the irreducible one-ness of American history, culture, and of the American population as a unitary corpus in justia. The crimes of one are the crimes of all, and so too, the remedies of all are the remedies of the one. As exemplar gratis I offer the proposition that affirmative action, a well known and very successful form of reparation and of social reform, would be more effective and truer to the intentionality of its original conception were it not simply race based but class based, which would admit to the obvious fact that social injustice and the existence of universal exploitation of the masses of Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity, is a common malady with an obvious, common remedy that recognizes our common struggle.
In this context I submit that William cannot, must not be individually indicted or blamed for American history but that, to paraphrase a great American author, Ernest Hemingway, we must not send to know for whom the bell of justice tolls for it tolls for us all. I submit that cadit quaestio, the matter admits no further argument.
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@ William the C.:
Sorry, William, I am a heterosexual male. But I do nevertheless consider myself to be beautiful (ha-ha-ha). No problem with that. The thing about posting on websites, as “Thwack” must realize by now even with his foot in his mouth, is that we are all making assumptions about each other (for instance I assume that Thwack is male since my prejudice is that a woman would not be as bumptious as he is–but I could be wrong). My current reason for continuing my long winded posts here is that I believe you have no obligation to ‘admit’ that you are Anglo unless you wish to, and that your ethnicity, gender, class, sexual pref., etc. have nothing whatsoever to do with the logic of your arguments. Your arguments stand on their own. You are not ‘in court’ but in a community of readers responding to Abagond, and unless Abagond objects to something you say, you are free to speak as you wish as are all of we. It’s called DEMOCRACY.
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Thwack you really need to lighten up. My comment on the fifth was me trying to inject some levity to our bout of words. Second of all I figured most regulars on here either know I am white or could decipher my skin color by one of several post where I implied my race and my sense of guilt for it’s treatment of others. As far as answering your last question, “Don’t be ridiculous”. A persons skin color cannot and does not dictate how intelligent they are, your proving that today….LOL. That was a little joke Thwack. I am a big nerdy white guy who likes people and recently have found a passion for politics. I am not perfect and during my journey to better myself and learn more about my brothers and sisters I share this planet with I will make mistakes and probably offend some people with my personality, my honesty, my views or in some cases the words I use in which I was unaware may be offensive to some. It appears that you do not trust me for one reason or another but rest assured I am harmless unless of course you end up being disrespectful or hurtful to others and then I will probably give you a verbal tongue lashing.
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@Rayfield, thank you again for such beautiful and wise comments. I do apologize for mistaking your gender, I can’t for the life of me think why I mistook you for a woman but i must admit, knowing those words come from a man now has ruined my “literary fantasy”…lol. Well I still have Mary and Sharina. I hope to learn a lot about literature and life joining all of you in conversation and debate and I look forward to further pow wows, as for now I must go I have lots of work to do…Thwack, I also look forward to fencing with you until that day when you hopefully trust that i am here for knowledge, the betterment of myself and hopefully those around me …
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“Why wouldn’t that include Jewish-Americans suffering anti-Semitism–for example the lynching of Leo Frank–while we suffered segregation after the Reconstruction,”
_ _ _
I’ve long wondered about the events surrounding the 1913 mob killing of Leo Frank, a middle class Jew from Brooklyn, who was lynched for the rape & murder of “little Mary Phagan,” a (nearly) 14 year old, white female worker in Frank’s Atlanta, Georgia located pencil factory.
As I recall from reading a book concerning the murder (there was also a TV movie about the event, which I saw years ago), there were at least two other men who were suspects in the murder of Phagan: the factory night watchman Newt Lee; and its janitor Jim Conley. Both men were Black. And though evidence pointed strongly at janitor Jim Conley being the culprit, it seems that the current of anti-Semitism flowing through Atlanta, Georgia at that time was even stronger.
I found myself thoroughly amazed by this event: early 20th century Southern whites choosing a white man to lynch even though they had at their disposal two “Negro” scapegoats they could easily have hanged (either one alone or even both together) instead — and who they most definitely would have hanged if Leo Frank had not been a Jew.
Sixty-nine years after the Frank lynching, 87 year old Alonzo Mann came foward and made the statement that the wrong man had been hanged, and that he himself, as a 15 year old office boy at the pencil factory, saw Jim Conley carrying the limp body of Mary Phagan in preparation of throwing it down a hole. Mann claimed that Conley had threatened to kill him if told anyone, and that when he (Mann) revealed all of this to his mother, she advised him not to tell anyone else.
Some found Alonzo Mann’s revelation, nearly 70 years later, to be unconvincing. . . .
http://www.leofrank.org/alonzo-mann/
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@ thwack: Comment deleted for Mock Ebonics.
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abagond
@ thwack: Comment deleted for Mock Ebonics.
—————————————————————————————————
oops, sorry,
I deleted the offending text:
Does everyone realize what just happened?
Its the reason why black people remain confused, ignorant and victimized by racism.
How?
Anytime a black person BEGINS to make progress asking a white person questions about racism, what it is and how it works; one or more black persons will jump in and try to break it up/cock block…
I call in “post traumatic slave syndrome”
* its when a black person jumps in to divert the revelation of truth about racism*
Ya’ll seen it on Oprah; the white woman starts crying and all the black people walk over and start hugging her, trying to cheer her up…
(((shakin my head)))
Black people have been trained to do this out of fear. Thats why you should not get angry with them because it is proof we are very much still on the plantation.
I knew it would happen.
William did too.
And yes, black people are ALWAYS in court; what do you think “driving while black” is?
Trayvon Martin lost his life because nobody told him black people are always in court.
The constant pressure of “the court” is why black people die early. Its the source of the heart disease, diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, thyroid problems, divorce, fatherlessness, child abuse, neglect and abandonment; and all the other associated pathologies displayed by black people.
************
William the Conqueror
Thwack you really need to lighten up. My comment on the fifth was me trying to inject some levity to our bout of words.
*************
It is said that black people laugh when nothing is funny.
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@Thwack, like I said, there is no doubt I will offend some of you inadvertently with comments I am unaware may be offensive or in this case someone who questions my motive it seems. You said that I knew how Rayfield would react to my comments, this is not correct, I am not that smart or intuitive. When I first began joining in on conversations I learned that many of my comments in which I thought were “PC”, where in fact offensive. I truly want to learn what is offensive and what is not so that while our country remains very racist I can hold conversations with people without offending them. Of course I am going to make mistakes, not because I am white but because I where my heart on my sleeve and that’s just who I am. If there is one thing I have learned over the last 10 years of being a home inspector and spending 3 to 4 hours in people’s homes from all walks of life; black, white, rich, poor, Jewish or Christian. All people are the same everywhere. Our culture may be different but our basic personalities are the same. People are smart, not so smart, fat, skinny, mean, nice, angry, easy going and so on. Culturally we are different but then again even in an all white or black area each family is culturally different from the next; some are family orientated, some are not, some are Christian, some are agnostic, etc..We are all the same in that we are all different individually. As far as who i am angry with and who you may be angry with they are the same people. I am angry that in 2012, after thinking my country had made huge strides in racism and equality I was horribly wrong. I watched the hate and the ignorance come out of the woodwork and it reminded me of my younger days, the 70’s and the 80’s when i learned how racist so many of my white friends, coworkers and general public was. I was glad to see and read about white privilege during our discussions here because I never had a name for it but I became aware of it many years ago. Of course I have always known that whites have it better than other races, this is obvious but what many whites don’t seem to understand or refuse to understand it is the underlining privileges that keep racism perpetuating. I had a job in a warehouse when I was straight out of high school and I was shocked to find out how many of the people there were racist, especially the management. We had one black man working there out of about 120 employees. Whenever Larry was not around the racist jokes would fly, if we were in the office my own manager would say many racist remarks joined in by my coworkers. At the time I was only 19 and I was angry, I have biracial cousins, my step father was black along with his family who adopted my brother, my mom and myself as if we are blood related. I could no longer sit in the office and chit chat any longer and this was the beginning of my anger at my race. This is when I also started putting two and two together in regards of how much harder it would be for a black person to get a job than it would be for a white person if all the managers thought this way, if all the employees thought this way and that is when I realized affirmative action was not only a good thing but a necessary thing until we bring some equality to our country. When you think about it, 30 years ago and even to this day, white men own everything, white men managed all the companies and white men had all the jobs, money and power. So this is a HUGE mountain one would have to climb if they weren’t white, a mountain I don’t think I would be able to climb just to get near the top and find out there is just another racist at the top. I started to imagine what this oppression of my entire community would do to my personality, my anger, my finances, etc, etc. I then started realizing why there is so much poverty in black communities, why there is so much drug abuse. In 2012 when I thought things were getting better and I started getting the racist post on Facebook and seeing it in the news I took on a special kind of anger towards white racist…they don’t have an excuse to be racist, we have all the privileges, we have all the comforts of life, we have all the advantages and blacks have almost nothing and it is all the direct result of how the white man has treated them from day one in this country…anyway I really have to go, we will talk later, if you want…take care!
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William, you wrote a whole lot of words about race and racism.
But the question remains;
Are you a white person, yes or no?
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George, please allow William to answer for himself.
Thank you.
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YES I am of a whitish color, am I pitch white, no. Am I anglo, yes. Have I enjoyed the privileges of being a white person, yes. Do I have learned white behavior passed on from generations of white supremacy, yes. Do I know what it is like to be oppressed, no. Do i say things that may be taken the wrong way, yes. Do I mean it, no, how could I I didn’t even know what i was saying was offensive. Thwack, you are definitely not going to let me in to the club without first breaking me it seems. Do I blame you for your mistrust, no, this is exactly why I am so mad at the entire situation and whites today and the past. I cannot be myself around some people because this world is filled with people who hate.
I was in a hurry so I was writing from the seat of my pants so to speak. Look it, if you want to grill me, break me down, whatever, thats fine with me. If you are wondering if I am one of those that have come back on this site with a different name just to screw with everyone, rest assured I am not. I am the same William from previous post, I added “the Conqueror” because there were two Williams and so I added the nickname the guys in the warehouse gave me. Now Thwack answer me this; What is your beef with me? Is it that you think i am coming off as some kind of Robinhood, taking from the racist and giving to the oppressed? You think I am here to amuse myself at the expense of others? I am here by accident but the moment I read some post and began dialogue of my own I have been enlightened, educated, have new acquaintances and i have told many of my Liberal Facebook friends about the site and that they should check it out.
Have I satisfied your curiosity? have I met your requirements? Again I have to go, if you welcome me or not I am not going anywhere unless of course Abagond decides I am no longer welcome and then i will exit peacefully, the same way I came in…
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@William
Well put, and what more need be said?
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@William
I think perhaps we are wasting our time with Thwack. He seems to ave more recrimination in his mouth than he can chew or digest.
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@Caffeine & Nicotine
Informative post, but notice the mistake you made–which clouds your reasoning: you refer to Leo Frank as ‘White”. You puzzle over why he, a ‘White’ man was lynched even though there were possible “Black” or “Negro” suspects. Your acceptance of the cartoon mythologies about race that all we Americans were raised with lead you to incorrectly assume that racial violence is motivated by some essential, biologically significant trait called ‘race’. Yet, Blacks’ very presence in this hemisphere in such numbers is only because of the Triangle Slave Trade, and The Trade was NOT repeat NOT motivated by or contingent upon ‘Race’. Rationally speaking it could NOT have been since when it commenced in the early 1500’s there was no such thing as ‘race’ in the European discourse. Race was invented AFTER the start of The Trade to be one of the several myths used to justify it.
The Trade was motivated by $$Money$$ as the slave plantation system that drove the Caribbean peoples into genocide was motivated by $$ and the American southern plantation system of slavocracy was motivated by $$ and the system of Jim Crow and of segregation, the Black Codes, the red lining and Blue lining of Blacks, and the discrimination of public policy from 1900 to 1970 were all motivated by $$.
Leo Frank was lynched because he was perceived NOT as ‘White’ but as a Jew. Jews were oppressed and attacked, and segregated, and murdered for 700 years in Europe because they were a convenient economic scapegoat for Christians in the wake of the Crusades and in the midst of The Inquisition, and for the Mercantilists/Capitalists. It is a long, complex history that originally involved the use of religion as an excuse for the abuse of Jews. Once “RACE” was invented by the slave trading corporations to justify The Trade, Jews in Europe and then later in the New World were given the mark of “Race” to go along with their being marked by religion. Leo Frank, for many reasons, represented an economic threat to the southern community he was in because his Jewish identity signified FOREIGN identity which had accumulated and would go on accumulating wealth and power, at least in the minds of his murderers. The myth of Jewish avarice, greed, ‘invasionary’ economics, and foreign ‘infection’ of national ECONOMIES was carried from Europe to the southern United States. He was lynched because he represented all of that to the ignorant people who lynched him. They did not see him as ‘White’ even though his skin color was not ‘Black’.
When Black people threatened to dominate economy, wealth, power, political representation, or cultural power, we are lynched (literally in the past, figuratively now). Both Blacks AND Anglos need to recognize that we carry on the lie of ‘race’ instilled in us by our oppressors (Capitalists), and that this clouds our vision, making us vulnerable to manipulation by capitalism. Evidence of this reality can be found in the absurd truth that Blacks too are anti-Semitic, meaning we are carrying on the very same European bigotry that promotes capitalist domination of ourselves. We in fact dream of being capitalists, of being corporate stooges, The domination of economic inequality permeates America, and the world. Blacks and Anglos go on hating each other because we all idealize capitalism and capitalists.
I live in Detroit, which is a city in the process of being ‘lynched’ while the true history of a city that was once a mecca of Black power is being revised and obscured so that no one will remember Mayor Coleman Young, who has been called the Black Pericles by one Anglo scholar here at Wayne State University, meaning that Detroit was the Black Athens which experienced a golden age of democratization of wealth and of political power, and experienced a renaissance in art, music, industry, and culture (I lived through that golden age, I know it happened).
Thanks to the myth of ‘race’ and the racism that rides it, people are unable to deal with the truth of American history AS IT IS, and unable to recognize one another or themselves AS WE ARE. Leo Frank is a major piece of evidence to support the reality that Race does not exist.
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Yes, thank you all, I am finished with the Thwack discussion. If him and I meet again on another subject I welcome his comments, as long as they are not a continuation of this thread or if they include his misplaced passive aggressive ire…Till we meet again my friends I wish you all the best.
Rayfield your picture is much clearer now, thank you, at almost 50 my eyes are not what they used to be, in addition 7 years on the computer has blurred my world a bit…Good day my friend.
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William The Conqueor
I am finished with the Thwack discussion. If him and I meet again on another subject I welcome his comments, as long as they are not a continuation of this thread or if they include his misplaced passive aggressive ire…
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When a white person reveals to you the racism they have witnessed, keep in mind that they may not be revealing the worst they have seen; and definately none they have personally practiced.
For the most part they are providing you a heavily redacted transcript of racism they witnessed.
When they describe your response to it as “misplaced passive aggressive ire”; don’t get angry with them.
Instead ASK them,
WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST I DO TO COUNTER THE RACIST BEHAVIOR?
Review the following statements of fact out of the mouth of a white person named William The Conqueor:
1. I had a job in a warehouse when I was straight out of high school and I was shocked to find out how many of the people there were racist, especially the management. We had one black man working there out of about 120 employees. Whenever Larry was not around the racist jokes would fly, if we were in the office my own manager would say many racist remarks joined in by my coworkers.
2. This is when I also started putting two and two together in regards of how much harder it would be for a black person to get a job than it would be for a white person if all the managers thought this way
3. When you think about it, 30 years ago and even to this day, white men own everything, white men managed all the companies and white men had all the jobs, money and power.
4. I started to imagine what this oppression of my entire community would do to my personality, my anger, my finances, etc, etc. I then started realizing why there is so much poverty in black communities, why there is so much drug abuse.
5. we have all the advantages and blacks have almost nothing and it is all the direct result of how the white man has treated them from day one in this country…
6. Do I blame you for your mistrust, no, this is exactly why I am so mad at the entire situation and whites today and the past.
Look at #6. Do you see how he can be “mad at whites TODAY” but a nonwhite persons response is described as “misplaced passive aggressive ire?”
This is why whenever a more powerful person than you attacks you over your response to a problem, you should always ask them:
What do YOU suggest I do instead?
Even if this technique ends the conversation, you have to use it because you will need to refer to it later on when other white people come to attack you for the steps you took to solve the problem.
If the hospital is on fire and you ask the administrator/supervisor (superior advisor) what to do, and he goes silent on you. You have no choice but to try and put the fire out yourself.
Even if by doing so you make it worse.
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@Rayfield, I think I understand. I will definitely choose my comments more carefully considering that these subjects are extremely sensitive and the emotion and experiences are real. I understand that any comments that may be confrontational would be counter productive as to what i am telling everyone that i want gain from my participation on this site. I will try to wear a tougher skin while we learn more about each other. I may have been a bit sensitive about Thwacks line of questioning and should have just answered his questions without being defensive. After all maybe he was just trying to protect the integrity of this site
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Many black American people have never heard an African persons viewpoint on the slave trade; Im one of them, and I doubt I’m alone.
I just happened to run into this one by accident and the number of dislikes it recieved is interesting?
Do you guys think this is because — well, actually, Im not going to prejudice peoples responses by indicating my own. But I will ask this question: have any black Americans produce a documentary where Africans in Africa give their view of the slave trade?
This is the first one Ive ever seen?
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhov6mwZlPE)
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@thwack
I personally think his ideas are based on christian ideas. It really solely depends on if you believe in a christian god. Once I listen to more of it I will comment more on the matter so give me a bit.
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@ Rayfield A. Waller,
Thank you for your equally informative response to my comment.
In it, though, you made many erroneous assumptions regarding my knowledge (or the lack thereof) and / or mind-set (even going so far as using the words “clouded” and “puzzle”) as to the history of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; the invention and history of “race”; sociology; cultural and physical anthropology; human genetics; the history of Afro-descendants (if that particular term for ‘Blacks’ makes you feel better) in America; and the history of Jews in America.
In my previous comment, if you’d bothered to notice, I said that “I found myself…” — which is past tense, and was phrased that way specifically because I was referring to the feelings and thoughts I experienced as a much younger person nearly 30 years ago when I first viewed the two-part movie “The Murder of Little Mary Phagan” on TV, and then again soon afterwards, when I sought out and read a book on the same subject.
[“Pay it Forward” aka Caffeine & Nicotine” aka “Fiamma” (I have followed this blog for several years and simply like a change of username every now and then).]
You’ve introduced yourself rather nicely, Ray. Welcome! 😉
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@ William
No problem, William my friend. You are right, It is best to let this thread drop. Let’s get on to some productive discussion of actual issues raised by Abagond.
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@ Mr. Rayfield A. Waller
I have greatly appreciated reading your comments. I was wondering if you had any information to combat some conservatives’ claims that the first US slave owner, Anthony Johnson was Black? I’ve seen this mentioned on a few sites and it irritates me because I thought he was a former slave himself. So why is this perpetuated by conservatives? I’m arguing with a few people against this and appreciate your insights.
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@bygodsloveandgrace
This claim is essentially false, Anthony Johnson was a former slave captured in the Angola region of Africa by slave traders. He was lucky enough to be transported to the Virginia Corporate Colony in North America rather than to the deathtrap of the Caribbean. In Virginia he was again lucky in that he was sold to an Anglo ‘patron’ who took him on as an ‘indentured servant’ (again, he was quite lucky! He might easily have been sold to a slaver and found himself back on a ship sent off to Santa Domingo and certain death).
In Virginia still, and now no longer a slave he finished his ‘indenture’ (his legal work contract with his ‘patron’, a ‘White’ Virginia tobacco grower) and became not ‘free’ since he was now not a slave, but became ‘concluded’ or ’emancipated’–in other words he finished his indenture. He was free under Virginia laws to do whatever he wanted after that and he purchased 250 acres of land (check me on that, it may have been even more) and became a plantation owner himself with two or three or perhaps five (I don’t recall exactly how many) ‘indentured’ under contract to work for him, their ‘patron’.
Johnson was not a ‘slave’ owner but a ‘patron’ under the old, 1600’s plantation codes of indentured servitude. All around him in the Americas and in the Caribbean, there WERE actual slave owners and slave plantations, so even if he HAD been a slave owner, which he wasn’t, he sure wouldn’t have been the ‘first’ (ha-ha-ha).
Conservatives and racists distort the details of slavery, the slave trade, indentured workers, the plantation system, the corporate plantations, patronage, and worker/slave distinctions for two reasons.
First, conservatives and racists (and the so-called ‘New Confederates’) tell lies and create deliberate distortions out of their desire to concoct what Abagond calls ‘derailing arguments’ meant to change the subject (of the slave trade for instance) to side issues that the derailers hope will embarrass, intimidate, confuse, silence, or trip up Blacks and enlightened Anglos and enlightened Euro-Americans who seek to argue against racism, slavery, sexism, corporate injustice, or inequality (take a look at the derailing tactics and arguments appearing recently on this site directed toward ‘William the Conqueror’, an enlightened Anglo seeking to question and challenge stereotypes–his honest and sincere questions and arguments got ‘derailed’ by the side issues of his ‘race’, implying that his questions, arguments, and he, were somehow illegitimate or not serious because of his ‘race’, or his unwillingness to answer cross examination of his racial identity. He successfully, in my opinion, avoided and defeated these derailing tactics by sticking to the point of his arguments, which is a good way to fight ‘derailing’.
The other reason conservatives do this ‘derailing’ (by saying absurd things such as ‘Africans sold themselves into slavery’ or ‘the first slave owner was an African/African-American’) is simply because they are IGNORANT. They don’t know the social, historical, economic, political, and corporate histories of slavery, the Americas, the Caribbean, the African states (‘Africa’ didn’t really exist in 1600–it was, as it is now, a huge, continent full of an absolute diversity of a thousand nations, states, kingdoms, regions, and empires) the slave trade, indentures, ‘White’ slavery, ‘White’ indentured servitude, and the corporate early American colonies and the early plantation system of the Caribbean.
To know about and understand these things and to understand how these specific systems and histories effect the present, requires READING BOOKS, something many conservatives abhor. Holding up a book to these people is like holding up a head of garlic before a vampire. Books are too much work for them, I guess. A great book to read that covers most of this complex history is “From Columbus to Castro” by Eric Williams–two editions exist, I think, and the first edition is available on Amazon.com very cheap.
The most crucial point to remember in discussing Johnson and his status is that in the early 1600’s when he was taken into slavery the MERCANTILIST slave and worker system still existed, which for indentured ‘White’ AND Black servants meant that if they went to the right points in the slave diaspora, they could survive their indenture and could achieve freedom. Even some slaves could eventually buy their freedom. The CAPITALIST CORPORATE TRIANGLE SLAVE TRADE system was still getting on it’s feet in the early 1600’s, and the massive numbers of Africans taken out of Africa did not really begin to reach astounding levels until the LATE 1600’s. There were still native Caribbean workers (the Taino, the Arawak, and the Caribe peoples) slaving in the Caribbean islands, and there were still large numbers of ‘White’ slaves and ‘White’ indentured workers in the Caribbean picking cotton, processing sugar cane, and farming and mining. Some in the Caribbean were under horrible conditions and some where better off. It wasn’t until all the Caribbean natives were dead from brutality, working conditions, rebellions, and disease and it was clear the ‘White’ European slaves and indentured workers couldn’t replace so many lost natives, that the CAPITALIST system began to replace all traces of the MERCANTILIST system and the massive numbers of Africans were brought to the New World packed like fish into slave ships by the corporations such as Dutch East India Co., and British East India Co.
As we know who have bothered to read history, political science, and economics (I teach those things at Wayne State University), ‘slavery’ is ancient, and is universal. Nearly all human cultures have practiced it. But ‘slavery’ has never been as systematically brutal, destructive, and dehumanizing an economic system nor as much a global industry as it became by 1700 under the policies of the global, corporate Transatlantic Triangle Slave Trade, which invented CHATTEL slavery and which swept aside relatively civilized previous European, African, and Arab slave practices and indenturing, in favor of a corporate GLOBAL chattel slave INDUSTRY. I have posted a couple of detailed analyses of this history on Abagond’s site under this same string, “Africans Sold their own…” if you want to read what else I have to say about the subject of the Transatlantic Trade.
There is a very definite distinction between the various terms people toss around with out defining or even understanding them: ‘slavery’, ‘the slave trade,’ ‘the transatlantic corporate trade’, ‘chattel slavery’, and ‘indenture.’ There is a crucial distinction between Afro-Arab slavery, European indentured servitude (the system Mr. Johnson was lucky enough to survive) and the capitalist corporate global chattel slave system. Conservatives are either too dishonest or too ignorant to debate those particulars so they toss out ‘derailing’ arguments about Africans selling themselves, Jews being behind the slave trade (which they weren’t), Black slave owners, and Arabs participating in the corporate slave trade (they did not).
The last important thing to know about Mr. Johnson in order to avoid getting ‘derailed’ is that he lived in one of the CROWN COMPANY and JOINT STOCK COMPANY colonies of the early Americas, in Virginia, which was a unique place experimenting with democracy and with rule of law meant to emphasize free enterprise, and individual freedom and citizenship, unlike the monarchist culture the ‘White’ settlers there had left behind in Europe. and unlike the fatal brutality of sugar refinement going on with dehumanized Black and ‘White’ workers and slaves in Haiti and in San Domingo, Mr. Johnson’s rights were protected in the Virginia Colony, despite his African identity, because Africans had been in the American and Spanish colonies and in North America as businessmen, navigators, sailors, and even citizens for nearly 100 years! In Virginia’s Freed ‘Whites’ too, were given opportunities they could never have enjoyed as impoverished peasants back in England.
Surrounding Johnson were ‘White’ citizens of Virginia who had been in ‘servitude’, the system of work for passage and for land that European ‘Whites’ participated in in the 1500’s and 1600’s to escape abject poverty in Europe, to pay off a debt, or to serve a period of punishment for a crime. The system was quite dehumanizing and even fatal for Anglos unfortunate enough to serve in the Caribbean.
If Mr. Johnson can be ‘accused’ of being a patron (he can’t be accused of being a ‘slave’ owner) then the accuser ought to be aware that he, like many other former indentures in Virginia, acquired land under a Virginia system (called the ‘headright’ system) requiring landowners to pay for their land in part by paying the passage across the ocean, the cost, and the expenses of a number of ‘White’ Europeans or other displaced workers, whom the landowner was required to take on as indentures. Johnson, a former slave, would not have been able to afford land otherwise, and he was required by law to not abuse, exploit, or enslave his indentured workers (one of whom was Johnson’s own son, by the way!), all of whom would likely have been quite pleased that Johnson had made it possible for them to come to the Americas, have work, have shelter, and have a chance to work towards citizenship.
Only one negative point about Johnson arises in a couple of books about Early America: one of his indentures, John Casor, filed a legal suit against Johnson claiming that his indenture was over, yet Johnson had failed to release him from his contract. Some sources claim Johnson had lost track of the man’s legal papers, other sources say Johnson was malfeasant regarding this particular indenture, or held a grudge against Casor due to personal conflicts. I have done no reading around this issue, so I can’t say–however I can tell you that Johnson’s neighbors, fellow land owners, convinced Johnson that the right thing to do was to release Casor from his contract, and the suit was never enbenched or summoned in court. This one small detail, in ignorance of or deliberately ignoring all the other context I have given here, may be the sole basis of the outlandish and frankly dishonest, slanderous, and racist lies and myths about Johnson being ‘the first slave owner in America’ (HA!)
Sorry to be so long winded, but I wanted to be sure you had enough information to crush any and all ignorant derailing arguments you will encounter regarding this amazing man, Anthony Johnson, who should actually be seen as a hero to African diasporic peoples, and to Europeans and to all Americans as well. Descendants of some of his indentures were said to celebrate Johnson’s birthdays long after his death. He should be a figure of high regard rather than having his name and his honor dirtied.
Bless you for your determination to speak the truth and oppose lies, for the good of both Black and Anglo Americans.
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Rayfield I have never attended a University and only have a few college courses under my belt but when I read your post I can imagine what it would be like sitting in a 200 year old classroom, maybe in one of the East coast schools, taking notes and learning so much from each point you make, thank you for that
Of all the discussions regarding slavery, oppression, social atrocities, etc I have noticed one common denominator. It’s not the color of ones skin per say, not one country or another and not a specific era. These vial acts have been perpetrated by every country, every race and during every decade and they continue to this day. It seems that the common thread is POWER. If you follow the evidence it always goes back to someone in power, almost always a male and almost always wealthy and almost always cunning enough to influence the most ignorant of people among us or control them with fear.
England nearly conquered the world but it wasn’t it’s people who set out to do such a thing, it was a few royal families who had all the power and wealth. Africans didn’t sell their own, a few men who wielded the most power gathered these men and women using the power of fear and violence and did it all for riches. A few men who happen to be African who sell people to other nations does not make a country or continent of people selling their own people.
Who started the Iraqi invasion? America? No, one man with revenge and profit on his mind and a few hundred men in congress believing his arguments based on fear. Fear of another 9/11. Who was responsible for 9/11, the Muslim religion, NO. A few powerful men influencing young men and women that the western world is evil and that rewards beyond comprehension will be waiting for them, even though their actions are in direct contradiction of their scriptures.
Racism is much more systemic than this but it can all be attributed to a few men in power influencing the masses when they are at their most vulnerable. Whether it is a father holding the power teaching his children how to hate or a congressman passing racist policies and making his constituents believe they are good for everybody regardless of what statistics and logic conclude.
For the last 1000 years the white man has had most of the money and power, so indeed they have been the largest contributor to the evils of our world but all races of men are guilty of making our world a violent and miserable place for the weak, poor and oppressed. Maybe we should turn the world over to the women, they surely can’t do any worse. If we ever conquer racism and inequality we should pull together as human beings and tell those with the money and the power NO! We are not going to allow you to pit us against each other anymore, we will no longer point the finger at someone because they have a different skin color or pray to a different God, we will not allow you to demonize those that are the poorest, sickest or weakest. Instead we will rise up together and form a wall around the weak, around the poor and around the sick and say, “You shall not pass, YOU SHALL NOT PASS”!
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Thank you Mr. Waller!
What a profound and detailed post. I felt incredibly energized reading your information, which provided clarity and validated some of my initial research. It’s been difficult finding comprehensive information online and some of what I found appeared skewed.
“Only one negative point about Johnson arises in a couple of books about Early America: one of his indentures, John Casor, filed a legal suit against Johnson claiming that his indenture was over, yet Johnson had failed to release him from his contract. Some sources claim Johnson had lost track of the man’s legal papers, other sources say Johnson was malfeasant regarding this particular indenture, or held a grudge against Casor due to personal conflicts. I have done no reading around this issue, so I can’t say–however I can tell you that Johnson’s neighbors, fellow land owners, convinced Johnson that the right thing to do was to release Casor from his contract, and the suit was never enbenched or summoned in court. This one small detail, in ignorance of or deliberately ignoring all the other context I have given here, may be the sole basis of the outlandish and frankly dishonest, slanderous, and racist lies and myths about Johnson being ‘the first slave owner in America’ (HA!)”
Well stated. This is the only part that conservatives play up without ANY of the additional context you provided. So now I feel better in making my arguments about Anthony Johnson…
Agree that reading books is the best way to understand and see all of slavery’s complexities. Or any topic for that matter.
It is frustrating how some conservatives simplify slavery and distort narratives about Black people. Clearly even in 2014, some folks are uncomfortable in acknowledging slavery’s brutality, its successor Jim Crow and the legacy that’s affected Black Americans today. All conservatives do is pass down the same stereotypes and misinformation to the next generation in an effort to maintain White supremacy.
I appreciate our people’s ongoing resilience to survive and pursue excellence amid incredible barriers. The hatred and pettiness of racists, could not stop our contributions across science, technology, art, music, culinary, industry, politics and other areas. What I see is nothing but fear from conservatives and they’re more than happy to deflect and derail conversations about racial disparities all while passing policies that benefit a small few in this country.
Recently, Black conservative Mychael Massie wrote a column about ending Black History month because (and I’m paraphrasing) it makes White students feel guilty about slavery and doesn’t touch on modern “Black problems” as he puts it, like the Knockout game, etc. It was utter nonsense. The fact that he is Black spouting racist and stereotypical BS is appalling. But conservatives always have a few mouthpieces they can rely on to spew hate.The fact that Massie also consolidated Black History down to slavery, rather than celebrate our achievements and inventiveness makes me sick. I refuse to forget the past so I can appreciate where we’ve been and our future path.
Anyhow, I personally want to get better at dispelling mistruths and misperceptions about us. Your words inspire me to be more prepared during robust discussions.
Thank you again for your insights. We need to get you a radio show!
Peace and blessings.
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@Rayfield Waller: I being an autodidact, you have taught me much. I hope you stay on as a regular commenter.
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@ Ryder
The answer is simple.
How do you play a Mozart piano sonata when there is so much bad pop music out there? By mastering your instrument and studying–what Jazz musicians call ‘woodshedding’. Duke Ellington’s compositions are made up of all the same diatonic and pentatonic scale notes that the song “Disco Duck” is made of. The difference is that Ellington’s is put together differently. No pain, no gain. Americans stopped working some time ago, and it will require a lot of work just to get back up onto the horse
We need only follow our own tradition: read James Agee, Hanah Arendt, James Baldwin, Carl Bernstein, Margaret Rourk-White, Ed Bradley, Jimmy Breslin, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Michael Herr, Seymour Hersh, Walter Lippmann, Bill Moyers, Edward R. Murrow, Mike Royko, Gay Talese, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, I.F. Stone, Tom Wolfe, William F. Buckley, Nat Hentoff, the beloved “A Peoples’ History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, the glorious beauty of the works of David Halbertam, and the processional majesty of Arthur Schlesinger (I first read Schlesinger when I was 14, despite my Jr. High teacher warning me I was ‘too young’ to read him), Joan Didion, W.E.B. Dubois, Gloria Steinem, Frederick Douglass, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, Xam Cartier, my heroine, Susan Sontag, the American goddess, Pauline Kael whose death in 2001 was overshadowed by the 911 attacks, Lincoln Steffens, George Polk, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abigail Adams, and Ben Franklin, and well, READ.
You don’t have to wonder ‘what to believe’ if you do enough reading to be able to decide for yourself. That’s the whole point of freedom. No one tells you what to think or what to value. Democracy is the most fragile form of political organization because it depends on those who govern themselves to INFORM themselves and to make free choices about how to run a democracy as well as whether or not they will betray it and destroy it. I maintain that the depth, breadth, and profundity of American New World culture is so beautiful and incredible that only the cynical or the cowardly giving birth to the lazy and the selfish would fail to recognize how important and how blessed America is, has been, and can be if we only choose to remember how important we all are. All of us. All those people I named above are American icons, ‘White’, Black, Native, women, men, leftist, rightist, Republican, Democrat, communist, socialist, anarchist, and independent. It takes all of those positions to make an American culture. What they all have in common is that they all were and are SERIOUS and not trivial in their passions and their ideals. Despite my not agreeing with the beliefs of William F. Buckley I asked my students to take a moment of silence to honor him on the day he died. He was a towering intellectual force in American letters, not trivial or petty like so-called ‘conservatives’ of today such as the inconsequential Newt Gingrich or the vapid Sarah Palin.
Americans used to build and make things. We don’t anymore. We used to create a majestic and magisterial film culture, music, and art. Now we sit at home watching ‘reality TV’ and watching celebrities twerking. We landed men on the moon. Now we don’t even break the near orbit of the Earth. We all admired Aretha Franklin, and now we suffer through Lady Gaga-Goo-Goo. We defeated fascism, freed women from the worst aspects of domestic toil and death in childbirth, freed African slaves, paved the back roads of Tennessee with the Tennessee Valley Authority, fed and nurtured thousands of American artists with the Federal Works Project, changed the surface geography of Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada with the Hoover Dam project to generate hydroelectric power at the height of the Great Depression, and ended historic levels of hunger and abject poverty with the New Deal of President Roosevelt. With President Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ and his ‘Great Society’ programs, we freed human minds from urban ghettos–like MY mind, and the ghetto in Detroit that I grew up in. The abolitionist movement was a group of ‘Whites’ such as John Brown who strove to end American slavery and who jump started the American feminist movement and the free speech movement and the civil rights movement. There is much to be proud of in all of that, many lives saved, many future heroes created, like my 21 year old daughter who has just finished college and whose future is bright; I expect heroic things from her though my grandmother, whom my daughter is named after, was an Alabama girl born under segregation in a shack on a cotton farm not even expecting to finish fifth grade. I suspect in fact that the brilliance and the vision of Abagond can probably be traced back to one or more of these American social justice projects.
You don’t need a college degree to read a book. You don’t need to be a Negro to have soul (listen to Janis Joplin!). You don’t need a tour guide to go to your local museum and see the beauty of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings, such as his mystically wonderful painting, “Christina’s World”. It is when we forget who we truly are in America that we fall victim to the most oppressive, the most petty and shameful ideas and cruelties that we see around us now; the torture and crimes against humanity of Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq carried out by US soldiers and by the CIA are NOT who we are, those things are who we periodically allow ourselves to sink to when we let fear and bad faith discourage us and misdirect us into wasted energy spent on bigotry and hatred and greed. This is a symptom of memory loss, aided by the insipid mediocrity of the mass media and the emptiness of consumer culture that makes us accept evil politicians and corporations advocating the lowest common denominators of our history. It is a history full of crimes, yes, but therefore full of struggle and victories, and hope.
The work we need to do to overcome our memory loss should not discourage us, because that work brings joy and brings us together. The joy is there for us all to share in–Duke Ellington’s “Take the A-Train,” Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces”, Ray Charles’ “Unchain My Heart” (YES!), “When The Man Comes Around, by Johnny Cash, “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday, ANYTHING by Jango Reinhardt, and Chet Baker’s nearly angelic singing of “My Funny Valentine”!
You don’t need to try to figure out which you should eat: an San Fernando Valley Fat Burger or Chicago Lobster Newburg, or your grandmother’s fresh baked bread. One is bad for you, one is a delicacy, and one is part of your heritage and the family love that nurtured you. If I have a choice between kissing Lil’ Kim or kissing Nancy Wilson, I’m gonna kiss Nancy!! Where’s the dilemma there? Madonna or Grace Kelly? Princess Grace, of course! Sinatra or Vanilla Ice? Hey, Frankie, Man! “Summer Wind” by Frank Sinatra is worth 1,000 Ku Klux Klan renditions of “I Wish I Were in Dixie” .
Simply remember who you are.
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@ Mary Burrell
That’s kind of you. I am just glad that Abagond is here to enlighten us all.
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Thanks for the history lesson mr rayfield. I was reading about Anthony Johnson a few weeks ago because a lot of racists will bring up that a black man was the first slave owner. I looked it up and found that was a lie, John punch was the first documented slave after being sentenced to a lifetime of servitude for escaping with two white male servants who got off a lot lighter than him.
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Awww, shucks. Anybody can write, and one of my mentors when I was young used to say, “Genius is common.” Thanks anyway.
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You have valid points when you are speaking in your perspective, but speaking for how I feel as a white person was completely judgemental and just an opinion. Yet you spoke as if it was a fact. “Whites feel this way”. How would you know how we feel?
And I quote,
“Why not just face up to it? Because part of their sense of self worth is built on being white and how whites are better than everyone else, particularly blacks. But it is a huge lie, a lie that can only be maintained by not looking at their past – and present – squarely and honestly.”
I can answer this question. There is nothing to face. Personally speaking, I know about slavery, I know what happened, and I know it was wrong. What else is this to face? White people, again personally speaking, are sick and tired of crap being thrown in our faces every day about something that happened that we didn’t participate in and had no control over, from people who also didn’t participate in it. Yes I am sure there are racist white people out there today, but guess what? There is also a lot of racist black people. And the “we have an excuse” doesn’t cut it either. No one has a valid excuse for not liking INNOCENT people because of their skin color. Just because we are the same skin color doesn’t mean we are all alike. We are constantly treated like we owe black people something. The problem is that we don’t. Yes I feel awful for what happened to innocent people. I couldn’t imagine it happening to any innocent person of any race, but unfortunately it did. However, I will constantly feel like I’m being punished for something I had no part of. Just like not all black people are the same when it comes to stereotypes, neither are white people. There were also white people during slavery who were against it and helped end slavery as well
. So yes some people were slaves, and some people were slave owners. All I know is I will be punished for me (not) “doing something” that I don’t believe in because I am white and will be racially profiled for looking like a racist person based on my skin color.
That’s why we get annoyed.
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@ Starlena
You are a good example of just the kind of white person I am talking about. Thank you for the show and tell.
Not ALL White Americans are like you, of course, but DAMN FEW are not. Damn few. Like less than 5% in my experience. And that is being generous.
For example, when was the last time you heard a White American support or argue seriously FOR reparations for Black and Native Americans? On television? In print? In private? If my 5% number is wrong, a piece of anti-white stereotyping, then you should be able to name at least ten without looking up anything. Go ahead:
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At Starlena,
I cannot speak for all Black people and below is my personal opinion.
Please provide concrete examples of how you personally have been forced to feel like you owe Black people something or how you have been made to feel as if you are being punished for slavery.
You say you feel awful about what happened as if slavery’s ramifications are over. What people of color are trying to fight are White supremacist views and behaviors that affect our quality of life. You and other White people have the power to fight supremacy but allow it to linger by not taking any action. Why is that?
When you say there are racist Black people, give me an example of Black people profiling you and controlling your quality of life. There’s racism and then there’s prejudice and I think there’s a distinction between the two.
Let me ask you about “making excuses”. So when Black people protest say something like our unarmed Black youth being senselessly murdered by White people with an imagined fear of Black teens, is that an “excuse”? Or is that an example of us trying to ensure that Black life is valued?
When Black people fought for civil rights after enduring a century of Jim Crow laws that affected social, civil, political, legal and economic disparities, is that an “excuse”?
When Black people are fighting resources being taken from community schools as private organizations fuel a school to prison pipeline, is that an “excuse”?
When law enforcement is selective in its level of support to Black communities that are trying to combat drugs and crime, is that an excuse?
Help me understand how fighting respectability politics is creating an excuse mentality. Despite the continual racial atrocities we are surviving and closing civil, social, economic challenges each year after playing catch up for 500 years. Your whole commentary displays White privilege and you can’t even see it.
Your lack of understanding of modern Jim Crow behaviors solidifies why progress in building good race relations is slow. You have no concept of the Black experience in this country.
That’s why I get annoyed.
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Abagond I can name several but I only know them from my Facebook political sites and friendships and they are from all around the country and world. If I had to name 5 or 6 white people I know personally I would have a very difficult time, including my family. This includes my Mom who was married to a Black man for 6 years of her life, albeit not a great experience for her due to his alcoholism but not because of his skin color. I unfortunately would have to agree with you but I would still not classify Starlena as a racist, just someone who doesn’t see pass the veil….Of course we know little about each other on this site beyond what we write, except for me as I am a blabber mouth when it comes to emotion.
I have had a unique perspective because I am white other whites behave like they usually do when there are no POC around and this is where a great amount of my zeal for equality and change come from, as well as guilt.
I remember all of us sitting around the TV watching Roots as a child, it was a huge event for my family at the time. I had already been exposed to white people calling my Mom horrible names, kids asking me if I knew my Mom was a Black lover and even my second grade teacher asking me why my Mother was with a Black man, “Doesn’t she like her own race?”. He was Asian just to show you that assholes come in all colors. So I had known that the world was not as kind as it would seem to a 10 year old but when I began to see the images of whites beating black men, women and children I became very much entrenched with guilt. Here I was a white boy sitting in the room with my black step father, black cousins and black aunts and uncles and all of a sudden I felt different. I felt sad, I did not know why this happened like this but this is when I started disliking my own race, I became so mad and started hating my skin color. Of course I was just a child and as I grew older my perspective would continue to morph, learn, adapt to present times, etc and I slowly began to not hate my race so much but that doesn’t mean that I deny the facts of what my race has created for POC and this includes this very day……and i also know that 200 years ago there were many good white people who knew what was going on was wrong and more than 100,000 that gave their lives for change and this gives me hope for the human race.
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@ bygodsloveandgrace
Well put.
—–
Changing laws doesn’t change hearts. There are those who are willing to explain things to clueless white people, but it get’s shrugged off as “whining” or “entitlement”.
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Thank you Gen. We’ll see if there’s a response.
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@Starlena: It is the obtuse and clueless white such as yourself who are incapable of reflection or introspection, that and that is annoying to me. It’s individuals such as yourself who bury their heads in the sand and refuse to try to understand why African Americans are angry at the institutionalized racism in our country. You madam, whether you chose to admit it or not is apart of the problem. Introspection and reflection is what is needed on your part, try it some time.
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*whites*^^^^^^^^ typos
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@Gen: When clueless whites accuse blacks of whining and saying we think we are owed something is annoying. Telling us that we are too emotional, when we are just reacting to the injustice pisses me off. But, forgive me for venting. You and bygodsgrace made some good points. That’s why we need venues like this.
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@ Gen: My previous comment was caught in moderation. I just wanted to say that clueless whites accuse black people of whining and saying we have a sense of entitlement, nothing could be further from the truth. They say we are emotional, I am still trying to understand what that means. If we are emotional it is because we are reacting to the injustice done to us through institutionalized racism. I don’t know why some white can’t understand this. You and bygodsgrace made some good points.
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@bygodsloveandgrace: Good points.
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@Starlena: My suggestion to you is check out some of Tim Wise’s books and Youtubes videos. You could surely use some enlightenment.
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@ William The Conqueror: I appreciate you here as a commenter and thanks for being gracious and while you are on your journey of enlightenment.
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mary burrell
@Starlena: My suggestion to you is check out some of Tim Wise’s books and Youtubes videos. You could surely use some enlightenment.
————————————————————————————————–
My suggestion is to avoid giving Tim Wise any money because he is a fraud; all sound and fury signifying nothing.
The Tim Wise schtick is that he is a white person who agrees with what black people say about racism, and thats how he collects his check.
So whats the problem with that?
The problem is he never offers any suggestion for what to DO to COUNTER the behaviors of the racists.
So you see how this has turned into a racket for him? All he does is show up and give a speech about how racist white people are, the black people cheer him, then he collects a check, sells some books and goes home.
And the nest day the black people still don’t know the exact thing to SAY and or DO when they come under racist attack. Tim Wise makes good money running pep rallies for black people.
To sum up, all Tim Wise does is confirm black peoples suspicions about the behaviors of the racists. He offers no new, inside, secret, advanced… information.
You know why?
Because he doesn’t have to. Black people just want a white person to validate their suspicions.
We got some Tim Wise types right here on this blog.
*Be advised*
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Thanks Mary. I enjoyed your comment as well. Hopefully Starlena will absorb and reflect on our perspectives.
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@bygodsloveandgrace: We can only hope so.
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@Mary….You are a special kind of Lady My Dear, thank you.
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@ Starlena
Unfortunately for you, no one has to care whether you or ANY Anglo is ‘annoyed’ by Blacks calling for truth and justice. Know why it is hard to care what you are feeling? Because although there is legitimacy to what you claim as your perspective (which frankly is just your perspective and clearly not the “White” perspective since Anglos are just as diverse as you –rhetorically– claim, and as diverse as African descended peoples are), your perspective nevertheless is flawed by your lack of historical and analytical perspective at least in this instance.
It seems to me you are making the common mistake of disregarding an entire ONGOING economic and political complex of psychic suffering, destruction of Black citizenship and Black well being and life expectancy, exploitation and inequality within a poverty industry still stealing the wealth and lives of your fellow (Black) Americans all around you no matter how long ago slavery and lynching and Jim Crow and the lynching of Emmet Till and the police murder of Elenore Bumpers and the police rape of Joan Little and the police beating of Angela Davis, blacklisting of Zora Neal Hurston and planned inequality and insurance redlining and blue lining and urban removal and the economic draft and the lynching of Trevon Martin and the disproportionate numbers of Black men and women of urban poverty drawn into the army to be killed and crippled in Iraq and disproportionate numbers of Blacks incarcerated, and so on, HAPPENED.
It’s still all happening. It’s one thing to claim White fatigue and argue that ‘Whites’ AS A PEOPLE are not responsible for all that an objective SYSTEM of White supremacy driven by capitalism and profit fetish is and has been; I would go along with you on that, but to willfully IGNORE the ongoing efficacy and deadly effects of all that by mendaciously playing some historical exemption card in favor of a petulant whine that not all your people are alike and that ‘some’ of your people helped end slavery, yet speaking as if you can talk for all those people, is transparent on your part. Your real agenda in your comment is, it seems, to float the idea that this history is over and done and that you personally are ‘innocent’ of that history so let’s just all have a beer and Black people shut up and pass the popcorn and let’s watch this innocent Mitt Romney commercial.
Not hardly. An innocent American? That’s a contradiction in terms.
Go ahead and claim fatigue if you want Brother, but don’t try to claim innocence. In a sexist cultural and social order within a patriarchal male supremacist economic system I would never try to claim I’m ‘innocent’ or that my fellow males are ‘innocent’ of the oppression of women. Yes men do ‘owe’ American women for four hundred years of domestic and sexual slave labor on these shores whether I’m tired of hearing women complain about this truth or not.
You ought to check out “Race Traitor” (http://racetraitor.org) if you really want to get hip to the reality of a TRUE dimension of Anglo radicalism in this country. Just by reading the book “Parting the Waters” by ‘White’ historian and cultural critic Taylor Branch as well as reading his lectures and watching his tv interviews on CSPAN you will discover that when you claim “that’s why we get annoyed” you may not be using that word ‘we’ very accurately, and that at least for some Anglos who are conscious and progressive, and committed to justice and NOT fatigued with the fight for justice, your ‘we’ might be mostly just YOU. Maybe you don’t speak for as many “Whites” as you think you do. Maybe you need to take a long look at who and what YOU are and the long Anglo radical abolitionist heritage you seem to be either unaware of among your own people or perhaps are simply trying to avoid.
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@ Gen….
“Changing laws doesn’t change hearts.”
I love this statement, I have been wanting to say something as poignant in regards to this very subject for so long now and you have said it all with a few well placed words…thank you.
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Gen
@ bygodsloveandgrace
. There are those who are willing to explain things to clueless white people,
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If a person knows they are a white person, by default they know more about race and racism than any nonwhite person.
If a person knows they are a doctor…
If a person knows they are a firefighter…
If a person knows they are a car mechanic…
If a person knows they are a warden…
You get the picture?
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@bygodsloveandgrace: I was reading the exchange between you and Mr. Waller about Anthony Johnson, “Before The Mayflower, A History Of Black America” By Lerone Bennett Jr. pretty much said the same thing that Professor Waller said in his comments. I think this is a good reference book.
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“@bygodsloveandgrace: I was reading the exchange between you and Mr. Waller about Anthony Johnson, “Before The Mayflower, A History Of Black America” By Lerone Bennett Jr. pretty much said the same thing that Professor Waller said in his comments. I think this is a good reference book.”
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Thanks mary.
My readers list is expanding thanks to you and others on here. I look forward to enjoying some good books and increasing my historical knowledge.
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@Thwack.
Such hubris. How about if a person is a dodo bird. Do they then know all about dodo bird egg laying? No of course not because the dodo bird is a mythical animal. “White” people don’t exist either.
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The peoples you mention did not ‘participate’ in the Transatlantic Triangle Slave Trade run by the five major nascent corporations. Those corporations did NOT share global profits with Africans or Arabs. No offense, but you don’t need to read books on ‘slavery’ in Africa until you first make a decision to THINK about what you have read at this site, and certainly what I myself have been allowed by Abagond to post here. You need to stop dwelling on the myths and the misconceptions of the subject. The subject, certainly if you are addressing ME, is not ‘slavery’ (which nearly every human culture has participated in over the past ten thousand years), but The Corporate Slave Trade. That is what the subject is at least as far as I am concerned (I’ve posted extensively on this here, so everyone here knows what my analysis is and is about).
The Triangle Slave Trade, was not unabetted by Africans, Portuguese, Arabs, Chinese, Danes, Brits, Frenchmen, European Jews, Madagascarians, Germans, Italians, “The Old Dutchmen”, Spaniards, and probably even my Mama; but it was The Corporate infrastructure of ships, funding, and corporate/monarchist management that certainly was solely responsible for the historically unprecedented removal by kidnapping and forced relocation of between 20 million and 100 million African souls (depending on what sources you believe). Their removal from the continent was fueled by, managed by, and profited from by the global corporate order set up by early capitalism after the decline of European mercantilism.
The best thing you could do to begin your research would be to read “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx and to read some of Cheikh Anta Diop’s books in order to first of all gain an understanding of global economic power, and then to learn about the entire continent of Afrika–it is a continent, with a prehistoric history, a classical history, a modern history, a colonial history, a post colonial history, a technocratic history, a post modern history, and a post-post modern history, and throughout the latter part of the twentieth century EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE PERIODS was represented and lived, materially, in some part of the continent. I argue that Afrika is the most complex land mass on Earth, and that her history is the most complex, and can only be fully comprehended ECONOMICALLY. Arabs, Jews, and Africans themselves could not have possibly relocated upwards of 30 million people using the largest fleet of specially built slave ships ever produced by humankind in any given twenty year period of The Trade.
Okay?
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So am I supposed to feel guilty because my ancestors probably owned slaves?
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@GR,
Good Catch.
There is likely a higher percentage of Black Americans who have slave-owning ancestors, but it is white people who feel guilty about it (even if they do not dare admit it).
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@Rayfield A. Waller
The Dodo bird is not a mythical animal. The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius. It went extinct by 1700. There are still remains stored in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
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http://hnn.us/article/41431
Slavery is wrong/evil no matter WHO is doing it. I, and most other white people I know, do not bring up this point in an attempt to displace blame–we do it to try to make people see the WHOLE truth and not just the points they PREFER to see.
I would dissect your argument point-by-point, but the link I posted does that in a far more thorough manner than I could. If you chose to read it, of course…
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@Medusa…Your link has a lot of truth and a lot of deflection away from the actual facts. I could not stand reading the article not long after the line where the author says that Europe and Africa were as equals, Kings trading among Kings. Any courtesy Europe nations gave African nations was a rouse to gain their trust. It took all of 30 years after abolition of slavery for Europe to colonize Africa. Where did all that equality and friendship go to so fast?
The African people had absolutely zero interaction with the slave trade other than being the product. A few powerful Kings and/or Warlords kidnapped or imprisoned people and sold them to Western bidders. WHY? Because of the huge demand from Western and European nations. Without transcontinental traveling ships and railroads to bring whites to Africa looking for human slaves to buy, capture or trade for there would not have been an Atlantic Slave trade.
Other than the product is human, the Ivory trade is a great example of what was going on in Africa at the time. Today we don’t say that African nations are selling Ivory to all the rich animal killers and it’s the African nations fault. No, there are a small number of poachers sneaking around murdering animals for their Ivory and selling it to wealthy entitled people. This is more likely a better synopsis of the Atlantic Slave Trade than the deflective article you posted, regardless of who wrote it and where it came from….
Wherever there is a demand for something, regardless of how immoral and evil, there will always be an evil person or persons around to supply that demand. So what we have is approximately 385,000 (http://civilwarcauses.org/stat.htm) slave owners in America and 10 Kings/Kingdoms in Africa who participated, the other 163 African territories and millions of Africans refused to participate in the slave trade (http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=742). So what we had was a human trafficking enterprise no different than the international sex slave trade of today. We are appalled and sickened with child sex slavery and we point to all the right causes when asked but when it comes to the systematic capture and murder, rape, bludgeoning of 800,000 slaves, we teach our children to ignore it or that it was some fantasy joint adventure between the two nations, like some cordial prisoner exchange program. I am sickened!
Look it, no matter how much lipstick you put on a pig at the end of the day your date is still a pig.
“WHEN ONE EXCUSES EVIL BY DEFLECTING ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE ACT ITSELF ONE HAS BECOME A PART OF THAT EVIL AND LENDS IT LEGITIMACY.”
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White people would rather discuss what they did, than what they are doing.
Thats why they have you guy discussing “slavery”.
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@Medusa2005
The whole truth you are talking about is one that most black people already know. So if most already know this then you are in fact repeating or using it to place blame. Either way it is usually used as a means for a white person to excuse the actions of whites in the matter.
Even with your link you could not dissect his point, because what your link says and what his point is are in fact two different things. Also if whites wanted to actually deliver this truth then I am still wondering why in heck we have the same history books years in and year out that only show blacks as slaves and nothing else in regards to the slave trade? So less about the truth and more about not taking blame for ones part.
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@ Rayfield A. Waller
I deleted your last comment.
Comments must be in English. If you use another language for some reason, like quoting something in its original language, you must provide an English translation.
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@ Rayfield A. Waller
I deleted another comment of yours.
NO SPANISH PLEASE.
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@ Medusa2005
That article did not dissect my argument at all. Instead it supports a fact that my argument took as a given: that Africans took part in the slave trade.
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@ Medusa2005
For the sake of the readers of this wonderful blog, and in hopes that Abagond will read this and be warned about what you really are, My Dear Medusa, I will take the time to respond to your propaganda and expose you to everyone, perhaps even to yourself, since as far as I know you are not pernicious but simply ignorant and unaware of what you are peddling to people of color who read your posts.
First of all, as usual, you, as do most apologists for the right wing, the Tea Party, the Koch Bothers, and the American Heritage Foundation, and for ‘reform capitalism history’ project of revising the history of the TRIANGLE TRANSATLANTIC slave trade, offer single, and very questionable sources. The source you proffer, Sheldon M. Stern, is a notorious flunky for the mostly right wing think tank, The Thomas B. Fordham Institute (see the funding sources of the Fordham here: http://edexcellence.net/about-us/funding-and-finances.html). Your source, Mr. Stern, however, seems to use the Fordham Institute as a sort of shell, since though Fordham is conservative, it enjoys the support of groups such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, those stalwart funders of my and everyone’s favorite PBS programming and of justice and concern for the poor baby seals. I say that Mr. Stern seems to use Fordham as a shell because he also is a mainstay of the George Mason University, which you linked by linking one of Stern’s articles. This makes me think that you are not pernicious but simply unaware, because you don’t seem to know how reactionary–historically reactionary in fact–George Mason U. is.
Mason U. has ties to the anti-democratic corporate bully boys, the Koch Brothers, who are themselves inheritors of nearly 1 billion dollars of industry interests that with just a little research can be traced back to the original corporate slave trading companies. Stern has published two very reactionary studies, one in 2003 (“Effective State Standards for U.S. History: A 2003 Report Card”) and an even worse, more wrong-headed study in 2011 (“The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011″).
Mr. Stern’s theories, in addition to being historically revisionist regarding what he calls ‘The Atlantic Slave Trade”–not the topic of my own posts, because my topic is the CORPORATE TRANSATLANTIC TRIANGLE Slave Trade– also center on the leery idea that the standardized testing regime, which as an educator I can assure you has ruined the American educational system, should be reformed and made even more mechanical and stringent, rather than abolished in favor of the proven, more humane and more curricula-oriented, real skills theory of education that was so powerful and successful in America between 1770 and 1940–the real skills model that produced Thomas Jefferson, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Susan Sontag, as well as millions of democracy-loving Americans who fought fascism in WWII. This critique of Stern’s theories of education, particularly of history education, is not mine alone, because it is being broadly and deeply argued now by a clear majority of my fellow theorists and practitioners of educational pedagogy; for instance, Stanley Aronowitz and Jonathan Kozol. Kozol himself is a groundbreaking educational humanist against the sort of educational ‘functionalists’ that your source works for, producing ‘talking points’ for the American Heritage Foundation and for the Republican Party. Kozol is the author of “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools” (1991), and of “Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” (2005).
Now consider something, if you are not just shilling for the Tea Party, the Koch Brothers, and The Heritage Foundation funders of the think tanks Stern writes for: 1770 to 1940; that’s quite a track record, considering that the decline in American literacy and invention and even economic creativity and the slow but steady plummet and decline not of ‘standards’ as Stern argues in the article you linked, but of actual literacy and educational outcomes among American children, began in the fifties with the introduction of standardized testing and social conditioning over training in literacy skills. This approach to education coincided with standardized product codes, standardized urban planning, and standardized medical care, as well as standardized methods of segregating African American citizens. Your source, Mr. Stern, was even held suspect in the early 200’s by the relatively conservative Pew Educational Project and Pew Charitable Trust, because of his and his backers’ preoccupation with revising American history and belief in a retrogressive return to Apartheid style education in America.
What am I going on about, Dear Medusa? (I speak to you with my eyes averted, by the way, because as you can see I have not fallen under your spell of false intellectual substantiation through leery sources) Well, I am a university professor and a graduate of the John S. Knight Writing Program at Cornell University where I studied pedagogy and educational curricular formation. I happen to know full well what drivel you are trying to pass off as support for your absurd claim that Africans ‘participated’ in a global economy based on The Transatlantic Triangle Slave Trade run by corporations such as the British and Dutch East India Companies. I know what you are NOT saying and NOT accounting for in your post, even if you do not know yourself.
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@ Abagond
Sorry about the foreign languages, Abagond. I will be sure to not do that in the future.
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@ Medusa
Oh, by the way, if you read Geroge Mason’s personal papers and letters, as I did while in grad school researching what has eventually led to George Mason University being considered one of the top 5 most conservative colleges in America, considered #3 on the list in fact, with Karl Rove being one of GM’s many well known reactionary graduates:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/provincialelitist/the-5-most-conservative-colleges-in-america
I discovered something very ironic–that George Mason himself was an abolitionist!! He would slap you. Medusa, if you were to palm off your historical revisionism on him. Check out Geroge Mason’s views on slavery for yourself:
http://www.gunstonhall.org/georgemason/slavery/views_on_slavery.html
And REAL history grand?
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@Rayfield A. Waller
I truly enjoy your commentary. It reminds me just how much people do not know. I have to wonder….if Americans were more aware of their true history do you think things would be different?
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@ Thwack: Comment deleted for not being in Standard English.
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abagond
@ Thwack: Comment deleted for not being in Standard English.
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Sorry abagond, but I can’t remember what it was. Ive got a copy of it somewhere but Im not sure what I am looking for?
therefore I will not be able to make the intended correction.
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@ Thwack
It was the one about the white buffalo.
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Hmmm… since the Native Americans spoke in nonstandard English, there is no way to translate the statement into standard English without a signifigent loss of meaning and gravity.
therefore, I will withdraw the attempt.
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Native-American Ancestral Language = “Nonstandard English”
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@William the C
Perfectly said. If I had not been so long winded primarily to clarify the nature of Medusa’s sources and to supply more legitimate sources, I would have liked to have been able to so succinctly and articulately express what you have. The point is, as you say, that there was never any equality or any partnership between Africans and the slave traders of Europe.
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@ Sharina
Yes, actually, I do think Americans would be different–more noble–with greater knowledge, That’s why education has been watered down in this country; it keeps us confused, at each other’s throats, and keeps us believing in myths and lies rather than facing the fact that we are all brothers and sisters. The truth is that everyone, Blacks and Anglos at least, are of the same family–we’ve been intermixing for five hundred years, since the 1600’s when the first Africans were brought here and even gained their freedom here. Rape, yes, but also miscegenation, and also intermarriage. The snarky and sarcastic remarks by Anglos who post on this site seem always be a last ditch response when they can no longer push the myths they peddle. Then that sarcasm eventually gives way to whinning and self pity about their imagined ‘hurt’ over being ‘called racist’, which is not what Blacks are really trying to say, but is a position Anglos themselves choose to take by resisting truth and resisting historical knowledge. Ultimately I think, their greatest fear is that they will have to admit that their illusion of ‘whiteness’ really only endures BECAUSE they choose to cling to the petty issue of white guilt rather than choosing to embrace us and our struggle, which is their struggle and every American’s struggle. I really respect William the C. because he seems to have resolved that dilemma and allows himself to be human and to accept Black folks’ humanity. That’s what America could and should be, if only we all knew the full history–all of it, good and bad.
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@ Thwack
Since you have trouble sticking to Standard English, despite your apparent level of education, all of your comments will go straight to moderation. If I delete a comment and do not say why, assume it was because you used either non-Standard English or a racial slur in non-quoted speech.
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@Rayfield A. Walker (R.A.W. Quite fitting initials :-D)
I think you raised some great points, but the latter part of your commentary I disagree with. I don’t think White America will ever come together with Black America because some of them will NEVER accept the truth re: Their history specifically here in the USA. These white minded folks would rather live their lives delusional, thinking only white folks made the greatest contributions to the USA.
Racism aka institutionalied white supremacy is here to stay, unfortunately. My focus for my family is coping strategies re: the illusion of white supremacy.
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abagond
@ Thwack
Since you have trouble sticking to Standard English, despite your apparent level of education, all of your comments will go straight to moderation. If I delete a comment and do not say why, assume it was because you used either non-Standard English or a racial slur in non-quoted speech.
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OK, but I won’t ASSUME anything. Because thats one of the main reasons why black people are not as smart as they should be.
As a black person attempting to engage in constructive activity, I know you are under attack by the white people who practice racism. Therefore, by logical progression, your comment policy must be vague and obtuse lest the racists detect your pattern and work around it.
abagond, your blog is not a job application and Im not trying to impress white people with my ability to mimic their speech, even though I can do it.
Im a black person and one of the gifts God gave the black man is clarity of speech.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8-dii9Ma0)
You want me to give that up because of the white man?
Where does it end abagond?
The bible isn’t standard English either, are you going to ban that language too?
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@ Thwack
I made using Standard English a rule of my comment policy because 90% of commenters who use Ebonics are White racist trolls. You are the first self-identified Black commenter to have trouble with that rule. Which makes me suspect you are a White racist troll yourself. At the very least you are not a native speaker of Ebonics or AAVE, because if you were you would understand code-switching.
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abagond
@ Thwack
I made using Standard English a rule of my comment policy because 90% of commenters who use Ebonics are White racist trolls. You are the first self-identified Black commenter to have trouble with that rule. Which makes me suspect you are a White racist troll yourself. At the very least you are not a native speaker of Ebonics or AAVE, because if you were you would understand code-switching.
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Alright, since theres no continuity if all my comments go straight to moderation I will be on my way in search of another black blog which has found a way to facilitate the elastic exchange of information without the suffocating and crippling “moderation” you deem necessary for your blog.
I know they are out there because I’ve written for them before under the name “Josh Wickett”.
Good luck to all of you and if I find a black blog that supports the revelation of truth through uncensored ,high spirited and vigorous debate, I will let you all know.
Good luck.
thwack
PS– if I don’t find one, I can always engage white people; say what you want about them but they do value and respect a logical, well constructed argument; even when it comes from a black person.
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Good luck at stormfront!
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@lifelearner
Indeed, America has so far been a counter example to most of world and human history. Every other civilized culture, except maybe the ancient fascists, the unutterably evil ancient Assyrians, has eventually been forced to put aside their deepest obsessions with demonizing slaves and enemies in order to survive. Every one of them except the Assyrians eventually BECAME their enemies and slaves due to those they demonized eventually being assimilated and then taking over the master culture. It would be almost unprecedented, except for the Assyrians, if America (which is only four hundred years old, an incredibly young civilization, after all) continues more than another fifty to one hundred years on it’s present course. Assuming in fact that the Chinese do not invade America and put a stop to all this insanity (remind me to explain to you sometime how damned easily and fast the People’s Republic of China could invade and totally subdue the U.S.), my guess would be that America’s racial fetishes and obsessions will not last another forty years, as the inevitable population shift toward a colored nation continues speeding up exponentially.
May I indulge in offering you a powerful historical example of how ancient civilizations dealt with the inevitable incorporation of former slaves and enemies, eventually admitting them as full citizens? These examples are many but because our pathetic history classes and invalid textbooks in the high school system are full of historical silences, centuries of blank pages, and glaring holes, most Americans, weened on stupid Hollywood movies rather than books as a primary source for their knowledge of history, simply are unaware of these startling historical details:
Egypt.
The mongol ‘hordes’–Asians, Afro-Asians, Mongolians, Indus, Turks, and Armenians– invaded and essentially conquered all of Eastern Europe between C.E. 1170 and 1270. By 1200 they were in the process finally of extending their iron grip and dominance into Western, across the Adriatic, and into Northern Africa with their invasion and utter conquest of the Holy Land, of Upper Nubia, and the Nile Valley. And they were certain to win North Africa next. They gained and held vastly more territory than either Alexander or Caesar or Marcus Aurelias before them. They lay siege to Egypt, and would have won if not for the fact that back in their capital, Karakorum, located between Tajikistan and Kashmir, in the east, The Great Khan Genghis’ grandson, died. The senior officers of the Mongol armies hurried back to Karakorum for his funeral and to observe the ritual of selecting an heir.
But here’s my point: the sweeping conquests of Eastern civilizations had advanced as far North and west as Africa, and the African-Islamic Dynasty in Egypt. Mongol general llkhan Hulegu had threatened to destroy or to utterly enslave Egypt just as his forces had done to Syria, Iraq, Persia, Damascus, and Palestine. But back in Mongolia, the death of the Khan grandson who had taken over Genghis’ empire made Hulegu break off his advance to return home, leaving his field commander, General Kitbuga to stand an army in Egypt. Just as the Mongol armies had suddenly withdrawn from Europe before they could extend their conquest into the West when Genghis Khan had died, the death of another great Khan ruler back home left Kitbuga without sufficient forces to finish the conquest of Egypt.
Kitbuga Noyan was a Nestorian Christian Naiman Turk, a group enslaved by and then willingly subservient to the Mongol generals. He was a lieutenant to Ilkhan Hulegu, helping him conquer the Middle East. Kitbuga was in 1258 left behind by most of the unstoppable war machine of Mongol troops to fight on against Egypt with only a few thousand troops of his own–and he lost a decisive battle against the former slave rulers of Egypt, called The Mamluks.
WE SHOULD CONSIDER THE IRONY OF THIS: former Turk slaves of the Mongols were now fighting former slaves of the Egyptians, called “Mamluks”–predominantly Kipchak Turks of Cuman and Georgian (Russian) descent. The Mamluks, just like the Naiman Turks, had been used by their masters, in Egypt, to fight wars but had risen to complete control of the Egyptian empire. Thus, two armies led by two generals of two of the mightiest kingdoms of the Earth (North Afrikan Egypto-Islamists led by the Mamluk General, named Qutuz, and Mongolians led by Kitbuga, also a Turk) were both led by former slaves, both those leaders of Turkic ethnic origins, and they fought each other in a battle that determined the future of the entire human race in 1258-1260.
The future of the human race rested on this battle led by former slaves (that is no exaggeration, because if Kitbuga had won, Egypt would have fallen, Kitbuga would likely have held Egypt as an outpost of Mongol power, and Ilkhan Hulegu or some other Mongol general would likely have eventually returned to North Africa with half a million troops to finish the total conquest of North Afrika and of the entire Islamic world, besieged as it was from the North west by European Crusader armies and from the East by Mongols).
But Kitbuga lost, and the last major battle fought in North Africa by a Mongol general led to the fortification of Egypt and the complete resignation of Mongolian interests in North Africa. The Mongols would never again invade North Africa, though their cultural presence in Syria, Damascus, Palestine, Persia, and Iraq (Mesopotamia) would continue for five hundred years.
What is clear here for us, since we have been discussing the nature of slavery, is how strikingly different the experience of slaves was (in terms of the issue of permanence of slave status) in the ancient world and in Africa and The East, compared to the totally dehumanizing system of corporate slavery in the New World. We know that the conquest suffered by Europe, the poverty, disease, and suffering She endured from 1200 to 1400 might explain to some extent the brutality of the slavery of the Transatlantic Trade, yet the Islamists and Arabs who conducted an African slave trade of their own for hundreds of years before Columbus, habitually promoted former slaves to positions of power. Even the ancient Roman empire was eventually an empire dominated in its military and in its governing bodies, by former Etruscan, Afro-Nubian, Numidian, Nubian, Thracian, and even Christians, eventually! And in the end, by Germanic-Britannic slaves.
The New world was distinctive, and European Corporate slavery was distinctive, in its emphasis upon endless, generational, and permanent chattel status and racist oppression for enemies and for slaves. That status in Europe and America alone, has entailed the complete dehumanization of slaves, the destruction of their identification with their former gods, languages, cultures, and identities, as well as the imposition of self-hatred, shame, and sub human, non-citizen status upon them and their descendants in perpetuum (perpetually, forever). These characteristics of New World corporate slavery and of American chattel slavery in the United States can help to explain why hatred, animosity, and continued segregation, poverty, degradation, and illiteracy are still suffered by African Americans even some 130 years after the emancipation of Black slaves by Abraham Lincoln.
In 130 years, the former Greek house slaves of the ancient Romans were integrated into Roman society, with Roman children being required to learn Greek, and with Roman systems of law, architecture, art, and music all imitating or borrowing from Greek origins, while openly giving acknowledgement for this cultural honor to their former Greek captives, and while teaching Roman children to honor and admire Greek culture. In 130 years the former enemies of Rome, the Gauls, conquered by Roman general Julius Caesar and forced to pay tribute to their Roman masters, became honored generals in the Roman legions, and were admitted to full Roman citizenship. Gauls were thus allowed to run for senate seats like any other Roman citizens who could manage to gather the wealth and popularity that were required to seek senatorial status. As I have mentioned, even the so-called “Barbaric Golden Hordes’ of Mongol conquerors who savagely raped and pillaged Russo-Turkish, Asian, and African civilizations and laid waste to 100 cities and nations across the East, Europe, and Africa, promoted their former slaves, such as General Kitbuga Noyan, to positions of authority and free citizenship, ending with the reign of the two founding Khans, Genghis and Kublai, who though bloody conquerors of Asia, Russia, and Eastern Europe, bestowed peace, order, and safety upon an empire founded on the steppes of Europe and in China, making it possible for travelers across the Mongol empire to pass on modern roads from Eastern Asia to Western Europe (from the Vatican to Nanking!) as ambassadors, traders, merchants, explorers, students, and scholars, without fear of robbery, war, or violence. Kublai Khan, son of Ghengis as well, promoted former slaves to citizenship and power.
The ancient exception, as I said, was Assyria, not only more brutal, more violent, more vicious than Rome or Persia or the Mongols, but also for some reason more recalcitrant. When Assyria finally drove the populations She had oppressed to rise up like a mighty wave against Her and overthrow the kind and the capital city, Assyria was wiped utterly from its perch of fascist power. The victors’ hatred of Assyria’s oppression was so absolute, that they declined to loot the city, they left behind all its gold and jewels, they left the palace untouched, though full of Assyrian corpses. They condemned the city and the land it was on, and for hundreds of years the sand covered the city and it was only later discovered by archaeologists.
Assyria, unlike Rome, was left to rot even in human memory.
So though I theorize that America will eventually go the same way as past civilizations, and that relatively soon, so-called ‘whites and blacks’ will admit our brotherhood and sisterhood, there is no ultimate way of knowing if America will instead go the way of Assyria.
But for your family’s sake, for all our families’ sakes, you’d better hope not.
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@ thwack
Not to speak for Abagond, but haven’t you read the blog’s “Comments Policy” and the “About” section under the “About” tab? Isn’t it obvious from Abagond’s tone, his analyses, and his rectitude, why he demands standard English and no untranslated foreign languages? A big hint might be contained in his words from the “About” section:
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OMG, only a fully white-washed or white-centric person would say something like that. Even an enlightened white person would not say that. Does the writer believe that black people or Asians don’t “value and respect a logical, well constructed argument”?
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@R.A.W.
Thank you for your commentary. Now off to research Assyria. Keep hope alive! 😉
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@Jefe:I had to roll my eyes at thwacks parting statement.
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Fascinating…
What is more logical than having rules that we all follow because it helps to impede the Troll hordes from overrunning the site?
How many times would a normatively intelligent person need to be told that one of those necessary rules is not to use “mock ebonics.” When I see a person get warned 5 times in a row, I begin to wonder what is wrong with their brain.
1) So, you have a person who cannot seem to comprehend the obvious need for such a rule.
2) You then have a person who cannot seem to simply follow such a rule, simply out or courtesy to the blog owner – whether he agrees with it or not.
3) And finally, you have the kind of petulant exit that one might expect from a foot-stamping five-year-old after being told that he can’t eat his cake and ice cream for breakfast.
A great part of “logic” and “intelligence” is how they are actually practiced on the most basic level. It’s no good going to the library and studying Plato and Algebra only to then go out and drive your car home, ignoring all of the traffic rules.
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If Thwack is indeed truly Josh Wickett, then he is one of the sharpest, keenest, insightful brains I’ve ever witnessed on the web when it comes to analyzing and deconstructing racism/white supremacy, especially in Hollywood’s productions.
I’ve always been a fan of Josh Wickett, the sage critic of all things related to racism/whiteness.
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@lifelearner
Geez, I’ve gotten myself into some hot water now.
Not to my surprise, it seems that ABAGOND is read by a wide range of people, and to my surprise, two of my friends and colleagues overseas have read (already) what I had to say about ancient Assyria. I was contacted by two fellow professors, old socialist chums from my grad school days whom I used to visit in England, who now teach in Paris and in North Africa, both of them are Africanists who rail against the racism usually found among so-called ‘Near Eastern Studies’ scholars (who admittedly tend to be Jewish or Anglo, or German or British and who often write from the perspective of The First World, not from the perspective of peoples who actually live in the ‘Near East’). My friends claim that my ‘maligning’ the Assyrians makes me sound like a self-hating ethnic and like one of those ‘Near East’ scholars. Indeed, if you do a skim of the internet rather than read books, you will find all sorts of references to Israel and Palestine, and the SYRIAN people when you search “Assyria”.
So, lifelearner, it turns out I am going to present you with an online research source, not just to help you get info on the ancient Assyrians, but also to defend myself against my friends’ attack on me (!!) No doubt they will attack this source, too, but here she is, she is Professor Erika Bleibtreu:
Click to access CP6.0AssyrianTorture.pdf
Apparently, what I mentioned above is not a small thing: there is a ferocious discourse at large over the idea that the Arabs are ‘fascistic’ in their attitude toward Israel. There has been a weird appropriation of anthropological and archaeological research and discourse in order to use history as a bludgeon against Palestinians and Arab states, linking them to Nazis and Hitler, who hated Jews, and the approriators argue, “these Arab people were fascists even before Hitler, because they are descended from the bloody Assyrians!” (never mind the evidence that the original Assyrian nation may have been founded by Semitic peoples). I imagine that Bleibtreu too, gets appropriated by the academic anti arab equivalent of trolls. Who knows, maybe Professor Bleibtreu knows this and somehow lends herself to it–a lot of her research is linked on Israeli anti-Arab sites (online) and she apparently does submit her work to pro-Israeli sites. She’s German herself, but, well, the world of trolls is a strange one, and extends across many disciplines and media; they don’t exist only on the internet on blogs; the word ‘troll’ merely describes their online identity. I encounter them in suits in faculty lounges and at academic conferences in their day jobs!
That’s all beside the point, which is that one either is committed to historical data and a search for historical truth, or one plays on intellectual ‘teams’ and only wants to use information to support your ‘side’ against the other ‘side’–that’s propaganda.
I’m not interested in propaganda, or in defending my ‘side’; for example I have no interest in defending Africans against the charge that they practiced slavery–they DID practice slavery; nearly every human civilization has practiced slavery. For me, the issue is CORPORATE SLAVERY which created primitive accumulation (seed money) that funded the birth of modernism, of colonialism in Africa and Asia, and modern fascist corporations. I am not interested in claiming that my people were innocent and sweet and pure; I am more interested in understanding the history and the evolution of the human race, in the ultimate belief that one day the human race will outgrow wars and hate, and conflict, and violence and form one human coalition for progress, justice, and the eradication of suffering and want. Well, that’s just me.
So, thanks to the fact that there are all these youtube videos and online posts linking Arabs to fascism because they oppose Israel, hate Israel, and want Israel’s destruction (some of them, no doubt, genuinely anti-Semitic), I want to call readers’ attention to the fact that I am now carefully specifying that I’m talking about ANCIENT Assyria, as maybe I didn’t do enough in my post @ you, lifelearner. Readers might get the impression, say my friends, that I am talking of the Post Neo Assyrian peoples of the PRESENT day known as SYRIANS. I am NOT talking of these distant descendants of the ethnic areas of the Egypto-Hittite-Mesopotamian peoples that constituted the Semitic founding kingdom of Ancient Assyria. The Syrian Arab Republic, is a present day nation in West Asia located between the Mediterranean Sea and Lebanon. Like almost all the other modern Arab states, Syria does not go back thousands of years in its title, it’s geographic location and borders, nor its national identity. It was established as a so-called “French Mandate” (and a protectorate) following WWI. Most Arab states were established following WWI and WWII by British, French, Italian, and other European powers declaring them, annexing them, arbitrarily drawing their borders based on the national interests of the European nations, and pushing the populations of Arab peoples around like pieces on a chessboard, following the fall of the Ottoman Turk Empire, which had lasted from the late 1290’s to the early 1900’s (quite a run!).
There were ethnic ‘Assyrians’ within the Turk-Ottoman nation, perhaps descendants of the Ancient Assyrians, I don’t know. Perhaps ethnologists and anthropologists reading this can let us know. I’m an Africanist and Western historian, not an ethnographer.
Anyway, there may be ethnic links between the modern day Syrian peoples and the Ancient Assyrians, but when talking about Ancient Assyria one is NOT talking of the nations and peoples who live within the Arab states at present. I myself was not referring to The Syrian Arab Republic, not calling present day Arabs fascists.
To help you get past the vitriolic online mess of charges of fascism against Arabs, I will add Dan Carlin to my suggestions for you, lifelearner. His home page is, (http://www.dancarlin.com/). He is a good source for anyone interested in the science and in the ART of historical research. Dan did a wonderful series of podcasts in the past on Assyrian history, and he is a solid and detailed general historian (he lists an array of resources and useful bibliographies along with each of the history podcasts at his website, “Hardcore History”. A few of you have remarked that my initials spell the word, “RAW”. Well, wait til you listen to Dan. “Hardcore” is not an understatement. With the popularity and attention to detail found at his website and in his podcasts, he is a great TEACHER of history as well as a gifted researcher.
Dan too, got into some hot water with listeners and bloggers at his site when he speculated that the Assyrians no longer exist as a people. Ethnic descendants of the Assyrians quickly jumped on him, pronouncing otherwise: http://www.dancarlin.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=37381. Of course, he was merely remarking that the ANCIENT Assyrians, who indeed were the bullies and fascists of the ancient world, are no longer among us. It is this fact, which I see as a warning to America, that motivated me, lifelearner, when I responded to your heartfelt post on your desire to protect your family in anticipation that White Supremacy may be never ending.
I still hope you are not literally correct about that, Brother.
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@ Matari
I think Thwack is Josh Wickett. Their writing styles are too much alike.
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http://cree7.wordpress.com/tag/womens-tennis/
“Josh Wickett, the skilled veteran counter-racist practitioner and one of my favorite writers in the world, put on a clinic of counter-racist speech with the white folks on the PUA (Pick-up Artists) Blog concerning that sour-grapes mockery of Serena Williams’ beautiful figure by that marginal talent white female tennis player.”
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@Ryder
Awwww, gosh. Here’s a question:
Just what makes you think they need a navy to invade the US?
You think about that a little, and I’ll suggest that your lack of geo-military sophistication is exactly why most Americans cannot (just as the ancient Romans could not) envision the possible, even probable scenarios of an invasion of the US.
I DON’T think our military and civilian intelligence agencies share your utter lack of imagination–there are several scenarios they have run and trained for (as if training could prepare us), which you might still find references to in back issues of the journal, “COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY” and more possibly in it’s predecessor, “COVERT ACTION BULLETIN”, prior to 1992. “CAQ” ended publication in 2005. CAB was founded in 1998 by the legendary CIA operative, Phillip Agee, who became alarmed (as did the Church Committee in Congress) by the dangerous and uncontrolled activities of his agency operating without oversight and without the knowledge or consent of American citizens. CAQ was most well known in the late 90’s for its “Naming of Names” column that exposed the names of undercover CIA operatives whom the editors felt had committed crimes and done things not in the interest of American security but in violation of the law. An example of something CAQ had a hand in exposing was the CIA operation to distribute (or to support criminal distribution of) ‘crack’ cocaine in Black communities in California.
The naming names column ceased in 1982 or ’83 when The Intelligence Identities Protection Act was passed, making it a crime–treason, I think–to publish the names of undercover intelligence operatives.
I recall, anyway, that there were some revelations in CAQ in the 90’s regarding US countermeasures in the event of an invasion by the Chinese. I clearly recall standing in a suburban Detroit bookstore thumbing through an issue reading an article about it, and I also saw a similar article in the STRAND bookstore in a later edition of CAQ–a capsule piece on Chinese invasion countermeasures, none of which focused on invasion by sea, an impossible to unlikely scenario.
All that is not to imply that I think running scenarios is wrong. The US had BETTER run those scenarios. The Roman Empire didn’t, and Rome, to the great shock, dismay, and suffering of the Roman people, experienced defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the humiliation of Barbarian Arminius’ victories, The stunning resolve of warrior Queen Boudicca, and finally the slow encroachment of the Germanic and Britannic tribes who overthrew the empire even as the military leadership foundered in shock and loss of imagination in the face of people who just simply failed to swallow the Roman propaganda that ‘no one can beat Rome–‘the barbarians are too technologically unsophisticated’ (to paraphrase the last five or eight emperors of the Western Empire).
So. Just what DOES make you think the Chinese need a navy to invade North America? (LOL)
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@ Ryder
Come to think of it, even your analysis of a sea invasion sounds insufficiently considered: if the Chinese got to the (‘West’) coast they would face ‘A gun for every citizen’?? Would that really be an impediment for the Chinese Red Army? And you compare the Chinese to the Japanese? That’s the ISLAND of Japan you’re referring to? As opposed to the CONTINENT of China?
Did you ever play RISK when you were a kid? Or even just BATTLESHIP? How about checkers?
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@Ryder
But I didn’t SAY China could invade the US with it’s naval force, did I? Not being coy OR mean, just challenging you or any of the readers, to THINK more. Why do you think China would need a navy to invade North America?
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@Matari
Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, Josh freakin’ Wickett is the best counter hegemonic discursive theorists since Louis Althusser…
Except that Wickett has always had a problem with Ego projection. He arrogantly pronounces how he sees gaps in the social formation of Black vs White (Anglo!) group response in racial argumentation. He proclaims how real discourse ought to take a certain FORM, just as Thwack gargles at Abagond:
White people would rather discuss what they did, than what they are doing. Thats why they have you guy discussing “slavery”.–Feb 21 2014
Hmmm… since the Native Americans spoke in nonstandard English, there is no way to translate the statement into standard English.” –Feb 22 2014
OK, but I won’t ASSUME anything. Because thats one of the main reasons why black people are not as smart as they should be…abagond, your blog is not a job application and Im not trying to impress white people with my ability to mimic their speech, even though I can do it…
“Im a black person and one of the gifts God gave the black man is clarity of speech…You want me to give that up because of the white man? / Where does it end abagond? / The bible isn’t standard English either, are you going to ban that language too?”– Feb 22 2014
Thwack, like Wickett, almost sounds at times like a self-hating Black person. Maybe…but whoever Mr. Wickett is he presumes to speak for ALL Blacks and ALL Anglos, yet I have never read Wickett say anything that speaks for MY closest Black or Anglo friends, who are all quite a bit more sophisticated than Wickett’s theories claim. On various web sites I have seen Wickett claim to run his own “CR Experiments” on the Black commentators on the web and pronounce his ‘findings’ regarding the absolute distinction between how smart Anglos are in their group-oriented support urge and how lacking Blacks are in their failure to support one another, at least in his “CR Experiments”. The arrogance and ego-fixation (White Ego Fixation is evident in Anglos who even in their determination to CRITIQUE Anglos end up reifying an admiration of the awesome intelligence of those evil old Anglos. I can believe that Thwack actually IS butt hole Wickett because his parting insult directed at Abagond was full of that characteristic ambivalence I notice in Wickett’s commentaries. Example:
https://cree7.wordpress.com/tag/josh-wickett/
Really?
In Thwack’s case. to accuse Abagond of failing to be as cool and sophisticated as the enemy, to accuse him of being an oppressor just because he lays down guidelines if you want to sport his ride, is an age-old self-hating Black characteristic (and Abagond by contrast clearly ain’t self hating). It’s characteristic of the self aggrandizing Anglo so full of himself because he’s ‘smarter’ than all the other Anglos and thus certainly smarter than the Blacks he heroically defends. Whether Wickett himself is a self-hating Black (which he may ultimately be) of a self-aggrandizing Anglo, Notice how in the piece I linked where he defends Serena Williams, that he hardly actually says anything about Serena. It’s mostly about his half baked theories about superior ‘White’ group response vs inadequate Black group response in arguments OVER Serena:
I know who the regular black commentators are; but they NEVER jump in to cosign or defend any of my counter racism comments the way white people jump in and promote defend racist comments.
Luckily, I find it easy, entertaining and educational to engage and defeat 5 racist at the same time with no assistance.
Go back and look at the language and condescending tone that Thwack lays down on Abagond, who is, after all, the PERSON WHOSE BLOG THIS IS (it’s his ride), who puts in his time, energy, and concern, allowing us all to blather on as we do. Notice how similar Thwack is to Wickett. I can believe the two are one and the same, and I wish him/them Aztec Gods’ speed. Long may he wave, and good riddance to his egocentric arguments, all due respect to his smartness, but then a Black scholar I used to be a student of used to remind me whenever I got all beside myself, “Genius is common, Ray.” None of us are all that special and hot pastrami just because we are smart folks (LOL).
Our grandparents and great grandparents built the infrastructure (roads, bridges, factories, ships, and cities) and thus the physical reality of a COUNTRY, after all; what have WE built so far?
The internet. VIRTUAL reality.
Yup.
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@Ryder
Again?? You sound like General Publius Quinctilius Varus, who lost three legions at Touteburg to the Cherusci barbarians, the way you insist on declaring a scenario in which you know you would win. The way to think geo militarily, as successful Carthaginian General Hannibal did, is to imagine what you are not thinking: think in terms of a scenario in which you would LOSE or the enemy would have an overwhelming ADVANTAGE you are not imagining.
A model to consider:
The successful geo military insight of Hannibal made him a lion whom Rome deeply feared and repeatedly lost to ON THEIR OWN HOME FRONT on their OWN GROUND despite having wildly superior numbers and a whole nation under their feet to depend upon for supplies while the Carthaginians had to rely on dwindling supply lines and then on what they could scavage in a foreign land.
In the Second and Third Punic wars between Carthage and Rome. Ironically, Hannibal who invaded just where the Romans never expected, over the Alps into the Po Valley, only lost to the ‘superior’, larger, more well supplied, and more organized Rome ultimately because he failed to continue to think geo militarily, and brought no siege machines with him to Rome’s gates for the final battle in Which Romans cowered behind their walls waiting for certain death.
He failed to starve them out, though he had beaten them and wounded them–humiliated them, and won over most of Italy to his own side. He gave up the siege, satisfied that they were whipped dogs now rather than conquerors, and though he had dominated and had enjoyed the run of the Italian Peninsula from the Po River to the boot heel for the years of his rampage through Roman territory he withdrew from Italy and….again, the fruits of the failure of imagination: he only a few years later saw his home, Carthage, utterly destroyed by a renewed Roman force. As Hannibal had won allies in Rome’s own homeland who’d helped Hannibal defeat them, the Romans made sure to win over Carthage’s allies in beating the Carthaginians. Rome did not fail as Hannibal had, in imagination: they tore through Carthage’s walls, and systematically wiped Carthage from the face of the earth, killing, except for the food animals and slaves they selected to take back to Rome, every man, woman, child, pig, goat, flower, tree, and root, tearing down the walls, burning the city to the ground, raking the ashes for survivors and then SALTING THE EARTH so that nothing would grow where Carthage had been. Thus, no possibility of retaliation now or ever.
Again, I challenge you: why are you so fixated on the so-called impregnability of the two American coasts? Why look at the coasts at all??
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@ Ryder
Here’s another hint: a zoom-able map of the US and Her place in the northern hemisphere. Zoom in.
http://www.maps.com/map.aspx?pid=15589
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G Ryder said:
“Let’s say they do make it to the West Coast, now they get to deal with a population that almost has a gun for every citizen. The Japanese knew it wasn’t a good idea to invade the US, “there would be a gun behind every blade of grass..””
based on what i saw in late april, 1992, in LA, I don’t think the homefront scenario would play out the way you seem to have the script written either
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Professor R.A. Waller,
I LOVE the way you tell history…. as a history buff, reading your summations has been very refreshing 🙂
Thank you and please continue to lay down the knowledge!
as for assisting your fellow commenters, you can jump into any of my comments at any time — for or against– I appreciate balance in all things and believe that everyone should be aware of the “truth” of the situation– the good, bad and the ugly. (I’m also aware that “truth” can also vary based on who is looking at it or writing it) but we should all strive for it anyway.
I could have used your knowledge in the “Spanish” thread when we were discussing the Moors… we had a “fake” professor trying to pass off his “cut and paste” google searches as diehard “college-level” academia
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if you wish to peruse:
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I appreciate R.A. Waller contributions please keep them coming 🙂
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@Ryder
Good thing you’re not. I will string you along for just one more comment, so bear with me–I’m a teacher, I can’t help it. So check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_transport_aircraft
http://www.janes.com/article/30640/peru-to-buy-c-27j-spartan-transport-aircraft
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/09/should-america-build-more-mini-aircraft-carriers.aspx
That’s not an exhaustive or even a sufficient list of online sources (after all, ‘online’ automatically means insufficient since if you want to do serious research you need to go to a library and break out the journal indexes and the CONGRESSIONAL REPORT as well as weekly digests of congressional defense committee meetings, testimony, and reports), but JANE’S Military publications in particular, including JANE’S DEFENSE WEEKLY are startlingly accurate, extensive, and up-to-date, and online. It’s always been surprising to me (I used to be an investigative reporter) how openly the information about our defenses and about global defense technologies and production are published and available to citizens.
You can look up some of the crucial military equipage that would be used in a scenario in which Russia or China, using Russia’s support or using Russia as a front or a fake setting-up scenario, would use large body military transport planes to airlift troops over the Bearing Sea and over the pole (it’s called ‘pond hopping’ by battlefield officers); as well as large troop carriers for aquatic crossings in shallow winter waters, across ice, and across snow. The technology has progressed at a shocking rate for military transport across snow that can move faster than at sea, and can leave very little ‘inertial imptint’ meaning its possible to displace mass in motion and take huge weights across relatively thin ice and even to continue if the ice breaks.
The US has invested very little in this technology. Both Russia and China have invested a great deal in it in the past ten years. Likewise, the past ten years have seen an unprecedented melting of polar ice, and widening of the Bearing Sea.
The US, which is still very focused on the technologies of WWII and on foreign theaters of operation, tends to invest little in the kinds of craft that would be needed to resist a massive over-the-pole attack, meant to defend the home front, opting since the cold war to invest most of our wealth in ICBM’s, and various surface to air, air to air, and mortar type weaponry for ground fighting. We also invest a great deal, despite twenty years of Pentagon officers objecting to it, to mass pacification electronics (disabling sonic weaponry, electronic scramblers, Electromagnetic pulse weapons, and ultra-violet weapons. Most of these weapons are very effective against THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY but would be either ineffective in a battlefield scenario or can be easily counter-measured by enemy troops who can use technology of their own to protect themselves.
That leaves what America is so good at and had put all it’s eggs into: nuclear deterrents. Except for the supposedly no longer being produced neutron radiation weapon, nearly all nuclear options for defense are along the lines of the old ‘Mutually Assured Destruction” philosophy of the Cold War Era. The use of tactical nuclear weapons meant for battlefield operations are nearly all predicated on the notion that we would be fighting in foreign theaters of operation so that the massive destruction and disruption caused by them would hurt the enemy, not us. There is a surprisingly thin band of possible nuclear defense to the north of us– a ‘feasibility zone’ in which only 25% or so of our population would die from the blow-back of a nuclear defense against invasion. All China or/and Russia would need to do to get quickly past that zone would be to airlift and transport a quarter million troops into Canada. Canad’s air defense is a joke. Ours can be knocked out with electro mag weapons long enough to take the battle from air to ground. Our ground forces could meet an invasion somewhere in Central Canad and stop the enemy before they could cross our northern borders. But at that point the enemy’s objective would be ‘ground dominance’ meaning to get as many troops into Canad as possible, because the goal would be to get a beach head in NORTH AMERICA at first, not necessarily the US.
Here’s the crucial part. China can field a twenty million man army if it needed to. It has the industrial base, it is a dictatorship, and can command a slave force (Chinese citizens) to mobilize instantly to produce what China would need for a protracted ground war. The goal would be, long term, to solidify a Chinese occupation of Canad and to exhaust US defenses while planning additional attacks on the US coast.
At any time, massive submarine and fixed ground missile superiority on the US’s part could end this scenario with nuclear attack. The Chinese would reason, I’m sure correctly, that the US would be unwilling to step up conflict to WWIII and an endgame that would end civilization–the Chinese would be smart enough to avoid even appearing to launch nuclear attacks. It would be on their part an old fashioned ground war of attrition (in three years they can field a 100 million man army) and of strategy to take ground and keep it.
Even tactical nuclear defense would cause unacceptable blow-back on the American population. Even our medium range nuclear missiles of tactical radiation yield– from city size down to ‘dirty bomb’ yield that would take out single city blocks)– would hurt us in close quarters as much as them, or would be ineffective to end hostilities used against an army upwards of 90 million.
Speed and surprise, as was the forte of General Hannibal, would be crucial to Chinese success. It would be a seven to ten year campaign. Remember that the Chinese THINK in increments of 100 years in their national, technological, and military planning. They are an ancient civilization, and they, not the Russians, have always planned to eventually eliminate us. I’m not saying that future Chinese leaders who are in their teens right now won’t usher in a change in this hostile attitude toward the US. But the attitude of the older generation, as we saw in Tienanmen Square, is that the younger generation is not to be trusted, and is even expendable–they don’t hesitate to kill even their own children for the sake of state power. They are getting old, just as our leadership is in the military, in industry, and in government. Old men ironically can grow very reckless as they see their life’s goals unfulfilled when approaching retirement, replacement, and death.
I have always thought the strong point of American democracy as well as capitalism is how thoroughly they can seduce the youth of this planet. We really ought to be emphasizing our propaganda campaigns to appeal to young people behind the iron curtain and the bamboo curtain. We don’t. We focus more on exploiting them by making deals with their governments to use them as our slave labor. That’s a long term mistake.
It’s just a scenario. I’m just a historian. I’m nobody.
Like Tom Clancy. It was Jayne’s that Tom Clancy referred to in his research for his most popular novels, including the Jack Ryan series. Clancy had no military service or even covert experience (such as we journalists get, or is gotten by smugglers, mercenaries, or diplomats, or even many Americans with familial ties in foreign countries who risk visiting relatives in war zones). He simply imagined his espionage, military, and military science plots and scenarios through the strength of his research skills, Jayne’s, and long hours studying congressional reports, military journals, interviews of military and intelligence officers, and Pentagon statements, in his local library.
His scenarios were so realistic and even predictive in some cases, that he got to meet President Reagan, who was a fan, and several Pentagon officers who wanted to debrief his ass to find out how he knew so much about the military and what they were doing and thinking.
I can answer the objections and questions I’m sure you have, though I’m not sure Abagond will allow us to go on about this side topic on a string that is about ‘Africans selling themselves’. I’m game though, if he lets us.
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Dear Rayfield A. Waller,
I delighted by your presence on this blog. I am a slow reader, and although I have only made a cursory skim of your comments, it looks marvellous.
I shall have more to say when time allows to read and answer you properly.
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@Matari
Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah blah blah, Josh freakin’ Wickett is the best counter hegemonic discursive theorists since Louis Althusser…
********************
@ A. Waller
Hate other black folks much??? So you don’t like Mr. Wickett. Or is it that you don’t like that he has fans? Are you jealous? So he doesn’t represent your views, or the views of anyone you know. So what? Is that supposed to make his commentary less legitimate, and your own comments superior?
Who knew that my two sentences would get your drawers all twisted to the extent that you would imply that I’ve waxed on … and on … and on, like you tend to do??
Most here know that I don’t write long verbose comments, so you should stop projecting with the “Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah blah blah…” junk. I’m not the one that does that!
You seem old enough to realize that we all have personal deficits, shortcomings, etc. As such IT IS counter productive for black people to attempt to annihilate another black person’s reputation because he has a fan and a style that is DIFFERENT than your own or those you hold in high esteem. What happened to respectfully disagreeing with another soul on the same/similar journey??
If this is how a supposedly learned black academic behaves on a public site, I cringe at the thought of how your non-inspiring posts may affect the younger RACE conscious black folks that are following this blog. It would behoove you – and us – if you were to get a grip, sir.
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ummm who is Josh Wickett exactly?
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In regards to Thwack or Josh Wickett, it would have been fine to agree to disagree and I understand clearly the guy has short comings(even if he did not think so). He was a rude, condescending, pompous azz. His whole time on this thread he was attacking one black person after another and high fiving da jokah at some points.
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@Ryder
But George, don’t get your socks in a knot! Geo-military scenarios are infinite.
For all we know the Pentagon has already planned some bad ass counter tactics for just the scenario I was speculating about. Just because our dumbass politicians ignore ingenius people and their ideas (like Dr. Robert Zubrin’s “Mars Direct: mission design, and Michio Kaku’s proposals for deep space exploration and star drive, and brilliant Pentagon defense planners, in favor of insane hacks like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, and that lugubrious fool, Donald Rumsfeld) does not mean these people are not still working away on planning and waiting for the crap to strike the fan belt so they can say, “Well, since you ask, Senator, here’s a little something we were working on in case you ever needed it…”
I myself can come up with a dozen counter scenarios that would stop the Chinese from even initiating such a north hemispheric invasion–mostly having to do with simple common sense alertness and planning:
1. Take Vlad Putin seriously. Just because the guy rides on the backs of bears without his shirt on doesn’t negate the fact that he was a 16 year ranking officer in the KGB. That’s the Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (that’s ‘Committee for State Security’–ok, Abagond?). For Pete’s sake, TALK to Putin–let’s just all take off our shirts and talk!
2. Be on the look out for a phony irruption of hostilities along the Russian/China border and a fake Chinese operation to ‘invade’ Russia, or more likely to ‘contest’ Putin’s recent claim on the north pole (did you catch that crap in the news? He wants to claim the North Pole! Is he serious? Maybe not. WATCH him). Because one scenario to fool us would be for China to pretend to go to war with Russia in order to move masses of troops into Russian territory where they could stage a rapid invasion of Canada over the pole.
3. Watch China by satellite for unusual troop movements, unusual buildups of naval forces in the north, and watch for any new industrial infrastructure that could be rapidly converted from civilian to military production. For instance, the last two weeks have seen open mockery of Chinese announcements of new medium to small size aircraft carriers. I KNOW you’ve seen these reports. “Ahhhh, hah-hah-hah, look at these silly Chinese, building SMALL aircraft carriers that look like cork boats next to our hugemungo American aircraft carriers! The Chinese carriers are too small to make a splash in the Pacific! And besides, how many do they have so far? One! So what!”
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/26/so-china-has-a-new-aircraft-carrier-so-what.aspx
Yeah. But they will be just the right size and two or three might be the right number for the Bearing sea, mightn’t they? Some Numidians who turned down enlistment in the Carthaginian army when they got wind of General Hannibal’s plan to take elephants over the Alps to attack Rome mocked it. “Ahhhh! Is he crazy?? Elephants? Over the Alps? Never happen! Nobody can beat Rome.”
4. Use the US diplomatic corps (the one W Bush oafishly tried to abuse and disable and started to eliminate) to funnel information and rumor and even candy bar wrappers back to Washington to keep an eye on what Russian government officials at the LOWER LEVELS are saying, thinking, or feeling about China both when said Russian officials are sober and when they are drunk–because when top officials in Russia begin planning something with Chinese military, lower level officials are going to resent the increase in pressure, demands on their time and precious office space, the secrecy, and the orders to shut up, and even the inevitable displacement they will experience when hoards of Chinese ‘advisers’ start showing up in Moscow and in Vladivostok. The Communist North Vietnamese got lots of information from resentful South Vietnamese government officials about American activities secretly building towards war because of a sudden influx and buildup of American military ‘advisers’ from a few to a whole lot in Vietnam in the early 60’s. Some of the books of the Kennedy Administration appointees and advisers such as David Halberstam and Ted Sorenson and Dean Rusk, and even the books of the hangers-on journalists such as Theodore White provide insight into how the Vietnam situation and many other actual real politics worked and works, such as the process of staying aware of what other countries intend. I think that despite great sources such as the “CIA World Factbook”, that in reality the intelligence services, more-so than the diplomatic corps have mostly gotten things wrong since the end of the cold war, but then what do any of us know about those super secret organizations such as the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and others we don’t even know the alphbets for, some of which may be far ahead of the seemingly dumb consciousness of our political leaders:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/
5. Sacrifice Canada. As soon is it appears that China and/or Russia are going to execute a north American invasion scenario, bomb the living crap out of Canada. Ignore that She is an ally, ignore Her wonderful bacon, maple syrup, and ubiquitous Tim Horton coffee shops, and make the ground that China wants to occupy unusable or even radio active, sacrificing the 20-30% of Americans who would be hurt by blow-back. Promise Americans cash ‘compensation’ for lost lives and for radiation sickness, and coupons for three years of free(!) Kentucky Fried Chicken, or something like that; it makes sense to sacrifice Canada and some Americans (careful planning could probably keep American losses as low as 10%) if the alternative is the possibility of WWIII. I think we’d be surprised how many Americans would accept cash compensation and chicken in the aftermath.
6. This is one of the strangest ones. Forgive me if this sounds insane. NEGOTIATE IN GOOD FAITH WITH CHINA. Give them food from our Midwestern ‘bead basket’, and lean hard on Russia–offer Russian central state politicians a butt load of gold bullion and EU currency under the table to release the Ukraine (The Russian ‘bread basket’) so that Ukraine citizens (particularly young Ukraine citizens) can have what they want: to join the EU. Once they have joined the European Union, run a go between to China to promote capitalist trade between China and the Ukraine so the Chinese and North Koreans (particularly young Chinese and North Koreans) can have what they need–food.
7. This one too, is a little crazy, so bear with me. Stop exploiting the youths of this planet so they can look up to America rather than resenting us. Sell them Ipods, video games, and Tupac t-shirts and win their ‘hearts and minds’ and when the old Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans die off, maybe we can start disassembling all these nuclear weapons; and by the way, INVITE the United Nations peace keepers into the United States, and stop resisting what the next step in global civilization has to be: world government (democratic govt of course, which computer technology makes not only workable but the only rational option to end world hunger, want, and under-development, the three major underlying causes of war). In other words, listen to each other, end conflicts, and share, like we all learned to do as children.
Told you #6 and #7 would be outrageous.
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@Matari
Whew! My head hurts from that pimp slap! I meant no insult; sure touched a nerve there–Wickett lover, are you? Not me, I’m agnostic, and don’t worship any gods at all, not even black/white/maybe black ones. I myself love the heck out of James Earl Jones, but I am able to admit he’s human. I agree wholeheartedly with Sharina:
“In regards to Thwack or Josh Wickett, it would have been fine to agree to disagree and I understand clearly the guy has short comings(even if he did not think so). He was a rude, condescending, pompous azz. His whole time on this thread he was attacking one black person after another and high fiving da jokah at some points.”
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Sharina,
Google is your friend.
Josh Wickett, in my opinion is a black male endeavoring to wake up the confused masses – which is most, if not all, of us who were raised in this racist system. I find him blunt, straight forward and pulls no punches. I happen to like the no nonsense way he delivers his illustrative messages.
Sharina wrote:
” I understand clearly the guy has short comings(even if he did not think so). He was a rude, condescending, pompous azz. His whole time on this thread he was attacking one black person after another and high fiving da jokah at some points.”
***********
Sharina, I find your choice of words interesting given that this very blog is home (so say some regular commenters about other regular commenters) to the occasionally “rude, condescending, pompous azz” that post here regularly, or used to. IMO he is far from unique or special in these things if he in fact truly has those traits.
*He gets static from the style of his technique. Ebonics, and the blatant way in which he speaks. But the dude knows the system ain’t no kiddie game. Josh, keep doin’ what you’re doing, man. Don’t give a damn if everyone here don’t understand. You let ’em tell you what to say and how to write..your whole web career’ll be over by tomorrow night.* (Inspired and borrowed in part from Quincy Jones – Back On the Block – lyrics
Lastly, sometimes what we see in others is merely a REFLECTION of ourselves.
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http://chinadailymail.com/2014/02/22/china-gives-order-to-commence-war-with-japan-if-it-is-appropriate-to-fight/
“Source: qianzhan.com “China’s Central Military Commission has given clearly instruction: ‘Fight if its is appropriate to fight’ that shocks Japan” (summary by Chan Kai Yee based on the report in Chinese)”
cant speak to the accuracy of the context, translation, or re-posting of this in wordpress, but it is singularly odd, if it came from a chinese official news organ, sort of above and beyond ‘saber rattling’
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@Matari
I did use google and I found close to nothing that clearly tells me anything about him, which is why I ended up asking others who he is.
I myself am a fan of no nonsense but it really becomes a question of when is it no nonsense and when is it just plain verbal abuse. He made not one but several personal attacks against me (quite possibly an effort to bait me, but personal none the less). He told most of the women on here we were not as good as white women and only suckers date black women or as he continuously told us “strong black women.” He hurled insult upon insult and only touched on white supremacy issues slightly.
“IMO he is far from unique or special in these things if he in fact truly has those traits.”—I agree these are not traits unique to him, but it does not set aside that those are part of his traits.
My job nor are my intentions to end his career. He is free to say and write what he wants, but when he makes it personal I am free to treat him in kind.
“Lastly, sometimes what we see in others is merely a REFLECTION of ourselves.”—Could be, but in this case no because those were the only words kind enough that I thought would not throw this comment into moderation. I don’t discount that he makes good points, but he lost even a shred of respect the very moment he began to personally attack people for the sake of……no reason I am aware of. How is that addressing white supremacy?
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@ Matari
Maybe Thwack has done some good work elsewhere, but on this blog he was pretty much a troll. On occasion he would say something insightful, but mostly he just seemed to bait and insult. Like Bobby M, he made inflammatory statements that were so ridiculous I doubt even he believed them. His whole shtick of Enlightening Us Dumb Coloureds (“coloureds” is a word HE used, several times. Why?) was more pose than substance – and extremely condescending. He was not far different than the white men who come here to enlighten us with the Truth only to spew ignorant stereotypes.
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Thwak was obviously trolling. He was saying stuff just to be provocative and get reactions.
I mean If he’s so smart…. how come he’s not so smart???
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Shirina, Abagond, King
Maybe Thwack and Wickett ARE ONE and the same. Maybe they are two separate/different alter-egos inhabiting the same person. Maybe I don’t know what (or whom) I’m talking about. Nonetheless, I still stand behind my position regarding Josh Wickett, that individual who has written some excellent critiques AND counter-racist theories – as far as I’m concerned.
I have not read all of Thwack’s posts, so I’ll concede that he may not have put his best foot forward, according to the written consensus here. I tend not to read (or keep up with) accusatory back and forth arguments (for lack of a better term) much, unless they directly involve me… so King, I can’t say if Thwack was smart here, but I’ve seen Wickett’s intelligence displayed elsewhere, countless times.
There does seems to be a similar writing styles between these two web names, but I’ve never seen or heard of Wickett behaving like a troll – in general – on black leaning blogs.
Sharina, I can’t seriously argue against anything written in your last reply… but I can offer you this: Wickett has written some excellent critiques (dissections) regarding some Hollywood movies and how they push racism/white supremacy upon the masses. He has also been a big part of many counter racist interviews, theories and experiments. When he thinks OUTSIDE the box he is usually dead- one. I’m referring to Wickett, the writer I’ve known, and not Thwack, the writer I’m unfamiliar with.
Mr Waller suggests that I worship Wickett as if he is god. That’s just silly. I simply find Wickett as interesting and instructive as say, Neely Fuller, Prof Derrick Bell, Trojan Pam, Dr.Frances Cress Welsing, Edward Williams and others that have strongly contributed to counter-racist theory.
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This is where I based my information on, I feel like I’m starting a rumor around the hood (*oopsie*, did i say that?), but what are the odds of thwack and josh wickett being used by 2 separate individuals? I mean anything’s possible, but…
https://cree7.wordpress.com/tag/josh-wickett/
“I’d say thwack (our Josh) can keep her, but I know he wants the milk-skinned Beckys too.”
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@ v8driver
The link to me to a blog but not to a post.
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@Matari
Fair enough, but I am curious on whether or not thwack is josh wickett or a psycho pretending to be him. Thwack was a bit unstable so anything he says is something I have to give a side eye to. It is likely he said he was to stir up conversation.
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@MJB it ain’t indexed like that whatever i’m not reverse engineering thwack
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^f
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@Matari
No offense, but you sound like a softer version of Thwack’s intellectual dishonesty here with your somewhat sideways apology. I have always felt creeped out by Thwack, and in reading backward to see more of his comments he comes off as an even bigger ***hole than I even thought. You admit, offhandedly that you haven’t even read all of Thwack’s comments, so how do you so casually put down those of us who have simply defended ourselves against his condescension and frankly racially tinged disrespect? Without even knowing the whole context, as you admit, you suggest that those who defend themsleves against him are ‘accusatory’? This blog is about arguments and support (substantiation) of arguments we present, not about personal deriding. Your own somewhat euphemistic language (” I’ll concede that he may not have put his best foot forward”) is a bit lame. “Best foot”? I think the consensus is pretty much that the snotty attitude he demonstrated in his strange, somewhat monomaniacal statement to Abagond upon his departure was characteristic of him. Spoiled, insulting, and thin skinned.
Now, I’m simply suggesting to you that you are being euphemistic and defensive about this instead of serious about it, I’m not saying you should be pilloried for the sins of another commentor other than yourself.
As for Sticky Wickett, I have read a lot of his stuff. He’s middle brow at best, with his very Cress-Welsing habit of hacking bad versions of psychoanalytic group theory as a substitute for genuine sociological analysis. I have been familiar for many years with Cress-Welsing’s “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation” which is brilliant in it’s way, but goes loopy as hell when she pushes it too far without a sufficient sociological basis (you know: historical and social data from careful, objective, longitudinal, cross sectional, cross sequential, and ethnographic studies, field research, statistical analysis to establish the difference between modes, means, real numbers and punctuated data).
In Welsing’s often glaring lack of all that she inserts her weakest crutch, so-called ‘melanin theory’, a VERY big flashing red light for the rabbit hole that leads downward to ethno-fascism, essentialism, and the uglier, more feudalistic aspects of bogus reductionist Black nationalism (such as The Nation of Islam, the US Organization, and Ron Karenga), as opposed to genuine Black revolutionary nationalism (C.L.R. James, James Boggs, Grace Lee Boggs–who still lives right here in Detroit with me–Angela Davis, Katherine Cleaver, The Panther Party, and Malcolm after he became a true Muslim).
I lived through some of the history behind all that foolishness of the encroachment of reductionist cultural nationalism that took over our communities after the assassinations and jailings of our genuine revolutionary nationalists; I was a young boy, too young to be involved but whose older uncles and aunts suffered through it in the 70’s. Derrick Bell, whose “Faces at the Bottom of the Well” I teach, was not a fan of Cress Welsing in her goofy mode of essentialist ‘race’ theory.
My point is that Wickett is sometimes unsettlingly trans historicist an trans-social, meaning he tends to set himself above and away from the sociology he comments on, with just enough of a tinge of contempt for his ‘subjects’ to put me off–only speaking for myself. No insult intended, I know you are not responsible for Thwack OR Wickett.
But all that’s why I believe Thwack IS Wickett and I suspect Wickett is either an Anglo, or is half Anglo. Either way, I feel it was best Thwack split.
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@v8
Maybe I’m missing something, V, but why in the heck do you quote from a repulsively racist comment by a reader from another blog, a response to a blog post by the inimitable subject of the moment, Wickett[Thwack?]? The blog post was Wickett’s at: https://cree7.wordpress.com/tag/josh-wickett/. I recognized it. Did you mean this to be funny. This same blog post is one that left me feeling queasy, both because of Wickett’s off comments and the off color comments of readers there. Your quote is from one of the more offensive of the comments. The context, for the readers at THIS blog who might not know what you are sampling in your comment and quote:
“on December 11, 2012 at 12:52 am | Reply Some white male
I used to like women’s (girl’s) tennis as a kid. Then those bead-braided, screeching monkeys came along and ruined it forever. Not even a sweaty swaying Danish piece like Caroline Wozniacki could bring me back. Forever unclean.
Interesting how a stacked body like Serena’s could be utterly repulsive to me. It’s cartoonish in its exaggeration, and usually squeezed into tight shit that leaves nothing to the imagination. No subtlety, no delicacy. Her broad shoulders aren’t the only masculine thing about her..
Dat azzzzzz! Badonkadonk. *retch*
I’d say thwack (our Josh) can keep her, but I know he wants the milk-skinned Beckys too.”
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@ Everybody
Here’s the offensive, breath takingly racist slur against Serena Williams:
http://www.vibe.com/article/Serena-imitated-by-Wozniacki-racist-controversy
Which is what Josh Wickett comments on at:
https://cree7.wordpress.com/tag/josh-wickett/
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@waller I was merely doing one of the things i do best, ie i find stuff and people on the internet, i didn’t mean to convey any content other than the supposition that thwack was josh wickett based on i believe peanut having ferretted him out at heartiste, thereby creating the correllation that he was indeed, on the PUA blog circuit.
* https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/#comment-216821
{*} http://cree7.wordpress.com/tag/womens-tennis/
“Josh Wickett, the skilled veteran counter-racist practitioner and one of my favorite writers in the world, put on a clinic of counter-racist speech with the white folks on the PUA (Pick-up Artists) Blog concerning that sour-grapes mockery of Serena Williams’ beautiful figure by that marginal talent white female tennis player.””
(do i have to quote my own post? how bout if it is a quote from someone else? that seems somewhat recursive)
this was another connector to indicate the validity of my argument.
I then found ‘cree8’ (and/or cree7) which had thwack and josh wickett in the same sentence, which is the one to which you refer.
Sorry, again, it is my discovery method, this was not meant not to impart the statement.
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No, no, no sorry necessary, I was just wondering, V, and I think from what you are saying that you are right on point. I think Thwack IS Josh Wickett. Sorry if I came off like I was fronting you off, Brother.
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@ v8driver
Oops, I didn’t include the @Vv8driver in my last message. That’s who it’s @. Sorry again, V. Abagond’s site is something special, with a high level of discourse and seriousness among commentators (I respect Ryder, Matari, Sharina) and I think most of us believe in the basic principle of respecting one another here even if we disagree or piss each other off, and I didn’t mean to disrespect you.
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not at all
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@ Waller:
(This is the last time I’ll be addressing you on the subject of Thwack/Wickett. I rarely write lengthy replies, but for you I’ll make an exception in the hope that it will promote greater clarity & understanding – and COMPREHENSION! I’m happy I’m not one of your students as you seem a bit slow in getting the thrust of what I’ve said.)
“@Matari
No offense, but you sound like a softer version of Thwack’s intellectual dishonesty here with your somewhat sideways apology. ”
(I attempted to soften my tone a bit, but what do I have to apologize for? Saying that I like Wickett’s take and style on counter-racism? Excuse me, but I don’t have ANYTHING to apologize for, regardless of whatever perceived shortcomings you (or others) see in Wickett. I’m not taking anything back!)
“I have always felt creeped out by Thwack, and in reading backward to see more of his comments he comes off as an even bigger ***hole than I even thought. You admit, offhandedly that you haven’t even read all of Thwack’s comments, so how do you so casually put down those of us who have simply defended ourselves against his condescension and frankly racially tinged disrespect? Without even knowing the whole context, as you admit, you suggest that those who defend themsleves against him are ‘accusatory’? This blog is about arguments and support (substantiation) of arguments we present, not about personal deriding. Your own somewhat euphemistic language (” I’ll concede that he may not have put his best foot forward”) is a bit lame. “Best foot”? I think the consensus is pretty much that the snotty attitude he demonstrated in his strange, somewhat monomaniacal statement to Abagond upon his departure was characteristic of him. Spoiled, insulting, and thin skinned.”
(I have not been put off by Thwacks comments. I more or less attend to worthwhile merits. The junk is just junk.)
“Now, I’m simply suggesting to you that you are being euphemistic and defensive about this instead of serious about it, I’m not saying you should be pilloried for the sins of another commentor other than yourself.”
(Never mind what I’m being? What are YOU being???)
“As for Sticky Wickett, I have read a lot of his stuff. He’s middle brow at best,”
(You do know that’s just your personal opinion, right?)
“with his very Cress-Welsing habit of hacking bad versions of psychoanalytic group theory as a substitute for genuine sociological analysis. I have been familiar for many years with Cress-Welsing’s “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation” which is brilliant in it’s way, but goes loopy as hell when she pushes it too far without a sufficient sociological basis (you know: historical and social data from careful, objective, longitudinal, cross sectional, cross sequential, and ethnographic studies, field research, statistical analysis to establish the difference between modes, means, real numbers and punctuated data).”
(First it was Thwack, then it was me for stating that I like Wickett’s insights and now it’s Welsing because I mentioned her. Apparently her theories haven’t been scientifically or socially or academically construed according to your exact standards.
You seem to enjoy looking at other people’s supposed deficits.. tell me A. Waller, are you as apt to peruse your own shortcomings as much as you seem to like dissecting at the issues of others?? Have you ever heard, “let him who is without sin/shortcomings throw the first stone?
Nonetheless, I’m not taking your bait to embark down yet another “rabbit hole” by arguing the LEGITIMATE or otherwise merits of Dr. Welsing’s observations.)
“In Welsing’s often glaring lack of all that she inserts her weakest crutch, so-called ‘melanin theory’, a VERY big flashing red light for the rabbit hole that leads downward to ethno-fascism, essentialism, and the uglier, more feudalistic aspects of bogus reductionist Black nationalism (such as The Nation of Islam, the US Organization, and Ron Karenga), as opposed to genuine Black revolutionary nationalism (C.L.R. James, James Boggs, Grace Lee Boggs–who still lives right here in Detroit with me–Angela Davis, Katherine Cleaver, The Panther Party, and Malcolm after he became a true Muslim)”
(I’m beginning to see now that you love writing/posting for the sake of just posting, or yapping. That tells me that I should not take your copious amounts of commentaries as instructive/CONSTRUCTIVE. You’re dropping *dimes* and being verbose, for what end??? To establish what … exactly? That you are a learned person with some knowledge of some arbitrary stuff Okay then good for YOU.)
“I lived through some of the history behind all that foolishness of the encroachment of reductionist cultural nationalism that took over our communities after the assassinations and jailings of our genuine revolutionary nationalists; I was a young boy, too young to be involved but whose older uncles and aunts suffered through it in the 70′s. Derrick Bell, whose “Faces at the Bottom of the Well” I teach, was not a fan of Cress Welsing in her goofy mode of essentialist ‘race’ theory.”
(I suspect you’re not teaching much, if at all right now. When would you have the time??? lol More blah, blah, yada, yada. Guess that’s my fault though, for having the audacity to mention both Welsing and Bell in the same sentence.
I understand and believe Welsing’s supposedly misguided race theory, as I do the other observations from the names I’ve mentioned. You see sir, I don’t follow prevailing winds or jump on popular bandwagons. I simply follow and trust my conscience … which is why I’m able to say things like – whiteness is DEMONIC – whether anyone else agrees with it or not!)
“My point is that Wickett is sometimes unsettlingly trans historicist an trans-social, meaning he tends to set himself above and away from the sociology he comments on, with just enough of a tinge of contempt for his ‘subjects’ to put me off–only speaking for myself. No insult intended, I know you are not responsible for Thwack OR Wickett.”
(I’m sorry that you’re held hostage by the box you call “sociology.” But you should know – as a LEARNED fellow – that not everyone is bound up in those chains of yours. Some of us know and feel things in our heart, in our core in ways perhaps you’re incapable of feeling, or knowing. We don’t put much stock in man-made (Western) traditions and methods. You and I can simply disagree about the (lack of) merits in Western Civilization’s culture, educational systems and endless falsehoods/conventional wisdom.)
“But all that’s why I believe Thwack IS Wickett and I suspect Wickett is either an Anglo, or is half Anglo. Either way, I feel it was best Thwack split.”
(I think he should have stayed longer! There are some here who preach that supposed trolls bring diversity, differences and challenges to this site and therefore should be permitted, even encouraged but perhaps they were only referring to the WHITE trolls – and not the half white ones.
So what! The last time I looked, half anglo and half black is STILL black, in spite of the current popularity of the – “bi-racial” label as if it’s a new modern category. The one drop rule is still with us according to white supremacy. Half anglos are NOT white. Some might get to work in the big house instead of the field, that is if they can’t or won’t pass as white.
Be well and take care. And try being more constructive in your dealings with your brothers and sisters. Just my little .02 cents. Peace..)
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@ George Ryder: I don’t want that donkey coming back her.
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Thwack was a pretentious jerk, I hope we never see the likes of him again, he was a sexist pig.
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@George Ryder
Actually the discussion between Matari and Rayfield is one you should not be quick to toot your nose at.I am sure you are aware of the saying “know your enemy.” I personally am not aware of this Josh Wicket (who thwack claims to be). I find it nice that the two of them are sharing knowledge about him so I know what to look for and even expect if I run into a similar individual.
In the past we had similar ambushes in here because we did not know our Enemy. Asplund and Xprae. Both professional trolls that basically ran a muck on this blog because we did not know much about them and I continued to engage in a friendly manner only with fail. Now I am aware of what to look for and the best way to proceed.
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@Rayfield.
Thank you for providing information on Josh Wicket (atleast what you were able to). I was very much not aware of him or anything about him.
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Only a progressive would say your slavery was worse than ours! You guys are an excuse making machine. The 1st slave owner in the colonies was a black man. Is that OK because he was black, but not our black, LOL!
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For my part, I did not get Thwack’s condescension towards Blacks (the Blacks who are not he himself, anyway). He simply reeked of ‘Tom’ in my opinion.
If he had a point to make here at blog “abagond”, I definitely missed it, as after reading some of his stuff, I basically just shrugged it off (as I usually do with white racist dreck) and went merrily on my way to the next comment.
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@George Ryder
I was thinking beetle juice. LOL
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ted nugent
You just murmured a miss representation of the facts (you idiots get information and you think it is gold).
“Slavery first came to the North American colonies in 1619 when John Rolfe of Jamestown purchased black laborers from a Dutch trader. Soon Caribbean and African blacks began trickling into the colony. The blacks who came to the Chesapeake, both from the Caribbean and West Africa, did so under ambiguous circumstances.”
http://tdl.org/txlor-dspace/bitstream/handle/2249.3/663/05_slavery_colonies.htm
Anthony Johnson (the individual you are referring to), had just arrived in 1619 and did not have indentured servants until 1651. It was 1654 that Casor (the man that became his slave) was the be released in which Anthony did not want to. It was the courts that ruled that Anthony could own Casor indefinitely. Had they not made such a judgement then Casor would be free and have no owner. Equal parts is how I see it. Jokes on you. LOL
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@Matari
You seem to be taking my analysis personally.
I didn’t mean it personally. I personally think you are a hell of a lot more interesting than Josh Wickett. Though I am critical of you I find your comments enlightening, while I have long been underwhelmed by Wickett (I speak for a LOT of African American critics by the way, who are underwhelmed by him) –he’s a subtle race essentialists, my Dear Matari, and that is ‘sticky’ because many race essentialists have great insights, are very learned, write well, even have good analyses, even make good coffee, yet they suffer from that nagging, eternal failing grace–they essentialize race; and thus they create a dialectic mirroring effect between themselves and the racial Other they tell themselves they are critiquing, often subtly exchanging positions and ego formation with that other (this leads to the irony that many Anglos mimic the Blacks they think they hate while many Blacks assimilate the lack of empathy, cruelty, and disdain of Anglos whom they resent yet envy). The very same sort of shameful race baiting Thwack did to Abagond (turning him magically into ‘de White man’ oppressor simply because Abagond exercises control over us on this blog–HIS blog) is the paranoia of Black race essentialists–anyone who challenges them gets semiotically converted into the Anglo enemy. That is exactly why I believe Thwack is Josh.
It’s an old, crusty, old, od, old, frankly antebellum trope, race essentialism. Black people had gotten beyond it by the 80’s. I was there when it happened, when we freed ourselves from it. POST AESTHETICS supplanted race essentialism, as the various precursors came together into a bona fide movement by ’84–an arts and intellectual movement (‘Post Aesthetics’) that grew organically out of older, more fringe elements and individuals in Black culture, music, intellectualism, and art. The dominant source of 80’s Post Aesthetics was the 60’s/70’s ‘Black Arts Movement’ founded and led by Black writer Larry Neale, writer Amiri Baraka, and rooted also in the art of Jean Michel Basquiat, continued by musicians Living Color and the Black Rock Coalition, by writer David Henderson, fleshed out in life form by writer Ishmael Reed, and writier, Jessica Hagedorn, by musicians Ornette Coleman (following John Coltrane), Lester Bowie, The World Saxophone Quartet, and Anthony Braxton, by poet Jayne Cortez, by historian Reginald Martin, by SOLID GROUND MAGAZINE, by novelist Xam Cartier, by Detroit Hard Bop, by The Jayne Cortez edited issue of BLACK SCHOLAR, by the New Yorican poets of NYC., by Pedro Pietri’s “The Mases Are Asses”, and going all the way back in aesthetic origins to 1940’s Black Marxism movements and the works of James and Grace Lee Boggs, and the old “News and Letters” publication by Raya Dunyevskaya (Trotsky’s secretary), and the works of Richard Wright and and the early music of Sun Ra and Rashan Roland Kirk, and the grand daddy of Post Aesthetics, C.L.R. James and his book, “Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways”; In theater, the works of Ntozake Shange, and another grandfather, the Hard Realist Black novelist, Chester Himes “If He Hollers, Let Him Go” and his book, “The Quality of Hurt.”
These various artforms and genres and histories came together in a gestalt in the 80’s and leaped over the crusty old parochialism of historically profound but nevertheless ultimately reactionary racialists such as the Nation of Islam and their rank anti-Semitism, and the intellectual myopics of Francis Cress Welsing. These elements and genres have something in common: rejecting the reactionary dehumanization of Anglos (and thus, ironically the empowering of them) by rejecting the urge to reduce them to their skin color, to their own falsely racialized culture (there is NO SUCH THING AS A WHITE ‘RACE’), and even to their violent,criminal history, because cutting off the head of race for THEM means also freeing OURSELVES and removing their power over us.
Not to mention the ferocious misogyny that arises from those old unreconstructed Black cultural nationalist traditions (The US Organization, Ron Karenga, The Nation, etc.)
I find Josh repugnant and though I might be wrong, I suspect he’s young, and young Blacks, though they have their hearts in the right place sometimes, are far too ‘neo’ in their reconstructions of the worst aspects of the old ways that they got to by skipping over Post Aesthtics. This is why current ‘Rap’ music and ‘hiphop culture’ are so moribund, morbid, woman hating, crass, lacking in imagination and sonic invention, and simple minded and adolescent–as well as ugly as hell in its glorification of capitalist excess and capitalist consumption, the values of gangsterism. Young Blacks bear the responsibility for this degeneration of Black culture and for this sad state of affairs, though they were of course bullied and exploited into this position by the piracy of the music industry, by mass media, bad education (illiteracy), Hollywood (Tyler Perry’s horror shows), the advertising industry, and the fetish of professional sports babies dressed up like Black men (the invidious, selfish, and greedy Michael Jordan). The young Blacks often skip the cure of Bob Kaufman’s “Abomunist Manifesto” and Ishmael Reed’s “Writing is Fighting”, and and go all they way back to the symptoms, such as the utterly goofy sorts of statements Wyckett utters in his many nearly theoretically incoherent web posts:
“Black people need to spend less time looking at each other and more time studying White Supremacists.” [http://www.thecode.net/books/yurugu_review.htm]
That is so utterly unusable for our survival, for the thriving of our children and the ending of violence we ourselves commit against our women, and the spiritual negation of our own inner rot; it is useless for our survival not just as Blacks but as AMERICANS (which we are, by the rights and the sacrifices of our grandparents, and for the sake of the future of the human race, which depends in part on what African Americans do here in the belly of the beast).
I’ll let Jayne Cortez respond to The Sticky One:
Cortez writes:
My friend
they don’t care
if you’re an individualist
a leftist a rightist
a shithead or a snake
They will try to exploit you
absorb you confine you
disconnect you isolate you
or kill you.
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@Ryder
You have a point. I just did it myself responding to Matari. I pledge not to write another word about Thwack or Wickett or either or both.
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@Sharina
Appreciated, but I think it’s time to let Thwack rest in peace and let him be gone so I’m done.
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@ted Nugent
Ohhh, are you living up to your name by baiting us? Tell me, who was this Black man who was the ‘first slave owner in the colonies’. Or are you just joking? Be careful–I’ve already exploded this racist myth her on this blog so I might drop a quote from my post on you heavy enough to split your wig (LOL).
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I’ve never heard of Josh Wicket and have no dogs in this fight but for all of us who are interested knowing “what’s what”: I don’t think Thwack is Josh Wickett.
I think he “admires” Josh Wickett and wanted to add some legitimacy to his comments.
Per the blog post provided by RA Waller:
__________________________________________________________
in the comment section, Thwack is the last person to make a comment, and Josh was commenting previously, using his own name “Josh”
“comment sections: 49 Responses to “Serena Williams and Her Sexual Threat to White Females and Testosterone Challenged White Males–Guest post by Josh Wickett”
thwack Says: December 31, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Josh made many previous comments before Thwack did, here’s one:
Josh Says : December 20, 2012 at 8:44 am
so unless Josh is talking to himself or is in the habit to comment on his own posts “incognito” (and I don’t see why he would),
then it’s safe to say, that Thwack is NOT Josh Wickett but a wanna-be, doing his “best” to imitate …. I guess, as I said, don’t know Josh Wickett, so Matari would be in a better position to judge Thwacks “emulating” abilities.
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Rayfield
I understand. Therr is a great little debate on Detroit and I was hoping you could check it out and add information. I am not very knowledgeable on it but I believe your comments up thread proves that you have more knowledge than me. It is on Moral Mondays.
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africa still isn’t a country. it’s a continent.
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I myself was thinking that if Thwack is indeed someone worthy of Matari’s admiration then Thwack himself is either a split personality or an imposter. Neither seems to be the case as, apparently, Thwack and Josh Wicket are separate individuals altogether, with Thwack being a mere hanger-on of Wicket’s.
Excellent detective work, Linda.
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@ Linda
Wow! I hadn’t noticed this detail–it does sound like Thwack is not Wickett, unless he talks to himself, yes. Thanks, Linda.
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“Excellent detective work, Linda”—-I agree. An excellent catch.
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Get over it, stop crying, others did the same and more.
These are useful phrases for you- we Irish and English were kidnapped as slaves by africans, ( Raiders/pirates from the Barbary coast ), for centuries ourselves.
We ‘got over it’, we ‘stopped crying’ and lastly, worst and at the same time ultimately better for a greater part of humanity than ever before, we did the same ourselves by enslaving others.
Why do I say ultimately better for a greater part of humanity as whole? Because by engaging in a large scale trade of indentured labour/slavery, we opened our own eyes and hearts to the evil that is at it’s root.
Once we had recognised the degradation that both victim and perpetrator experienced, yes- we english were one of, if not the first, of the great powers, ( at the time the greatest power on earth ), we then declared slavery illegal- it was an affront to the dignity of all.
So stop dribbling and admit that you are human, as your progenitors were, and that you nor I or our ancestors were devils or angels.
Happily we are a mix of each.
We share this world and it’s past and it’s future- we can walk together into the future holding each others heads high when we feel down or we can forever drag eachother down, sentencing our children and all those who follow an even higher wall to break down. Thank god for human failings and evil- they allow the next in line to do something positive! 🙂
A bit like thoughtless people who drop garbage on the ground, they let people like me smile when I pick it up and place it in the bin.
Good luck in your travel toward personal happiness, friend.
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@Marco:
Are you Buddhu’s evil twin?
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@Marco
Hmmm. ‘Crying’? One of three things could be the only thing explaining such an irruption of peeve from you:
1. You never bothered to actually read the analysis, history, critique, and intellectual energy from the very many gifted writers and thinkers discussing slavery on this site in this discussion string, several years worth now (since 2010) so your peeve seems unrelated to what has actually been written here, including Abagond’s initial post that prompted us all.
2. You just simply don’t read. Try “From Columbus to Castro” by Eric Williams, the gold standard of historical scholarship on the subject at hand. Then read the posts of William the Conqueror found in this discussion string, which should melt your cold, cold peeve. William is both intelligent and compassionate. A good model for you to follow to pass that peeve out of you as painlessly as possible.
3. You got upset by being exposed to just how brutal, ugly, inhuman, and disgusting the treatment of African-Americans, and particularly African American women, has been and still is in American and world history (you probably saw ‘The Black Woman Chair’ and felt a knot rise in your stomach, right?). This sudden enlightenment and the voices of Blacks who DON’T want to ‘cry’ but want to SPEAK always deeply disturbs previously unconscious Anglos (the average Anglo FOX NEWS TV host and FOX NEWS Anglo viewer), and disturbs ‘Black Anglo Saxons’ (what I call people like Judge Uncle Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, etc.) who have their fantasies about American ‘justice’ and how they themselves ‘overcame’ all that history ripped away from them by sudden knowledge and by the unfiltered voices of Blacks (like Mary Burrell’s, Poetess’, Linda’s, and all the rest on the ‘Black Woman Chair’ string). Likewise the disturbing reality of encountering enlightened Anglos saying things that make your peeve come down. “Ewwww, we make your peeve/come down/inside-out and all around/ewwww we make your peeve/come down” to paraphrase Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King.
By the way, you obviously know diddly about your own ethnic history if you are of British or Irish descent. A quick look at the global economic order, the shrinking size of the elite class, the American economic pie and how it is divided, the outcomes of the stock markets, the rates of murder, homelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction, Military Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, poverty increase, minimum wage subsistence, rising infant mortality rates, decreasing birth rates, increasing cancer rates, rising Anglo presence on the welfare roles, and other socio-economic determinants among Anglos, all show clearly that few of you have managed to ‘get over’ THAT history. In fact, proportionally speaking, and factoring in the unequal access of Blacks, we have had much better aggregate success at ‘getting over’ our history than you have. Part of the peeve of Anglos confronted with the truth is that they have to face the truth that they are in the same boat with those they wish to look down upon, and in fact, are not bailing out their end of the boat quite as well as we are.
If you want a reading list, and need a lesson in who you REALLY are, hit me back.
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@Rayfield Waller: In laymens terms could you explain what a race essentialist is?
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@Rayfield A. Waller: Perfectly stated.
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Wow! Very precise detective work there, Linda!
Bravo!
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@
mary burrell:
Ms. Burrell, a ‘race essentialist’ is someone, anyone, who sees the arbitrary biological detail of skin color as determining one’s intelligence, humanity, skill, creativity, worth, or ethnic qualities. Essentialists of race, gender, size, hair color, height, whatever, are those who reduce the historical, economic, social, and psychic complexity of any and every human being (the limitless complexity of anyone born into this HUMAN race) to one (or two or three) basically arbitrary adaptive physical traits by claiming they are essential to who and what a human is and can become.
The problem and confusion arises from the indisputable fact that CULTURES can to a great extent be reasonably essentialized–reduced to characteristics that tell us things about that culture. So, a man living under segregation in 1930’s Alabama probably will eat and love pork. Black people are not determined by skin color to like pork–it is an ‘required’ taste, required by cultural circumstance. Whole cultures, when looked at this way, can be essentialized but only as whole cultures: for instance, ancient Roman culture was not very inventive or creative–it mostly took from other cultures around it; Native cultures tend to be highly spiritualist, while modern American culture is very spiritually challenged and materialistic; female gender socialization leads to women being extremely socially adaptive while male gender socialization leads to men being extremely territorial and aggressive toward anything that demands adaptation; etc., etc….the motivating force is not penises, vaginas, hormones, and lip and nose thicknesses, but social determination. You can agree or disagree with my categories and descriptions of cultures, but the discussion itself is at least valid–we would have an argument. Not so with human skin color, thumb size, eye color, hair length, genitalia, or melanin levels, testosterone, estrogen, tooth size, or length of tongue. There is no argument there. Primary and secondary physical traits (skin color) are due to adaptation to environment or due to limited and specific biological functions such as human reproduction (hormonal secretions).
Anti-essentialists (such as Darwin, Emile Durkheim, Jacob Bronowski, Stephen Jay Gould, etc.) argue strongly that any biological adaptation such as skin color or biological function (such as child birth) is NOT essential (neither endocrinology, brain chemistry, hormones, or genetics have yet yielded convincing evidence of esssential determination of identity), and this is provable by looking at culture and socialization as ‘great levelers’: culture trumps Nature, or even makes Nature disappear (we manufacture light so we don’t depend on the sun to see our dinner plates, we purify water so we don’t have to live beside large bodies of moving water like rivers, we have gym class and exercise videos so girls can develop to be just as strong and powerful physically as boys–provided we allow everyone access to these technologies and practices, we are all potentially equal). Women who want to and who have trained to be able to should not be prevented from playing in the NFL, from being president (even while menstruating!), serving in the army, piloting space vessels, flying jets, or running the fifty yard dash against men in the Olympics just because they have certain previously developed biological adaptations they inherited from their parents. Asians should not be told they cannot play basketball, sing blues music, rap, work in construction, or dress up like Tina Turner on Halloween because they are Asian. If we trained girls from childhood to hunt, wrestle, box, spit tobacco juice long distances, and study foreign policy and economics they will develop into women who can surpass men in any of those things. If Anglo men grow up in ghettos and ride city buses with Blacks while rehearsing freestyle rap a thousand hours over their young adulthoods they will learn how to be funky (I grew up in Detroit, and when Marshall Mathers was a kid, I saw him riding the buses and hanging out in Detroit with Black people, incessantly rapping and beating anyone and everyone around him at it regardless of color. He was funky then, he’s funky now–you may not like his music, but it can be argued that the man is FUNKY).
I am an anti essentialist. Sorry that was so long-winded.
Now might come some disagreement from readers. Anyone who wants to take me on with cliche and pop culture inspired counter arguments, bring it. I’ll knock ’em down as you set ’em up. Any endocrinologists brainwashed by the malarkey you learned in medical school? You take a crack at me as well. Pharmacologists, just don’t say anything–you guys are chemists, and chemistry supports MY side of the argument (LOL).
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@Melanie S.
Appreciated, Melanie. And I appreciated learning about the real Laura Ingalls Wilder (http://en.gravatar.com/meetlauraingallswilder). This is an aspect of the many folk histories and cultures of America that fascinate me.
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@ Rayfield A. Waller. Thank you ever so much.
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@Rayfield A. Waller i admire a lot of what you said and you the only reason i stringed along the blog till thus.
A lot of people have a point while a lot of people just use this to express their xenophobia, to be honest am fed up of blacks playing race cards or down playing africans part in slavery ( slavery is still practised in 2 african countries but your{to the afrocentrist on this blog} vast knowledge of “afrocentric african history” doesn’t know about that.i hate when people talk about africa like its some county or country, and i hate the terminology black or white i.e a dark skinned or light skinned ethopian is biologically closer to a light skinned semite than a dark west african or A.american. Africa wasnt this peace loving utopia, like euopean and asia lots of ethnic groups kingdoms, most which ever knew each other yes africa is that big. How about some of you afrocentricst or eurocentrist pick up journals or books/history written by africans or captured slaves who escaped or were freed before crossing the Atlantic (i.e bishop ajayi crowder).
my point man is evil wherever he comes from we can time travel so we cant change the past or should we become puppets of it. 400 yrs ago the african/european/arab buyer or seller believed slavery was justified so wa the same with Africans who sacrificed humans or killed twins. Growing up in nigeria (a country in west africa ) what i have seen different tribes,religion ethnic or even same tribes do to each other up to this day i have never seen any white man or asians do that to a black person.
i have lived in the UK a decade and have seen black from the west discriminate Africans more than whites, and i have seen Africans do worse to each other, We are our greatest enemy. As a kid in nigeria i got called Muslims lover, or other ethnic-group lover because i made friends with every kind, in the uk lot of people call me white lover even though i have more black friends than other races combines. we tend to use slavery as an excuse to channel our xenophobia, racist from other races also have their false excuse too.
black racist will defend his/her reason to be racist so would a white, we cant end racism but by rightfully educating people we can reduce it, non of us want to be held for the sins of our ancestors but want to vindicate other for the sins of their ancestors.
Lastly i stick my middle finger to afrocentrst and eurocentrist you both have combined in damaging the true history of the continent of africa. And am willing to enlighten any one about african history, thats my duty as an african, of course i dont know all african history.
the divider and conqueror is winning.
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@Akinwale Kudos to summoning up succinctly just about everything I wanted to add to this long winded comments section. African Americans in the West are incredibly racist and won’t sit down to reason no way no how. Doesn’t matter that Arabs were enslaving “blacks” for millenium before the Atlantic slave trade and are were first on the scene to carry out bloody slave raids, doesn’t matter how many firsthand accounts of the slave trade in out of print books are out there to read, doesn’t matter firsthand written accounts of the fate of captured peoples dealt a death being sacrificed by other tribes to the orisa Ogun, doesn’t matter that there are families in Nigeria who can trace back through their royal lineage direct and very deep ties to the slave trade (and you would know this better than anyone on here), doesn’t matter that the Yoruba Ifa corpus describes in detail the use of slaves, doesn’t matter how loud a real Nigerian, Ghanian, Congolese speaks up about their first hand experience and knowledge of family history-African Americans are determined to argue and argue and argue because they believe that every person with white skin shares the guilt for the slave trade and wants to hold their feet to the fire for it. I live in Nigeria, Brazil and the US and can tell you that the true hell hole is the US-and precisely because of the racists. When I came up from brasil I experienced more racism from african americans than from any white people. I know Nigerians living in Brazil who are trying to help people there out of deep GUILT for what their ancestors did. Don’t try telling that to an African American Afro-centrist, they have no ears to hear. I myself am more pissed off about Crowther selling out the Yoruba but I digress. The people in the US aren’t even up to the knee in the subject clear enough to see the past except through hate filled lenses and sure as heck cannot see their way through to a clear future. Try telling them that on the African Continent they are viewed as hate-filled racists, they won’t get it or understand why. Even brasilians don’t like them. They are absorbed by the past and hatred. No one has time for that. I wish everyone well in their life path, if we can’t break free from the past, we cannot live in the present nor the future. Word to the wise, life is for living, not spending that life hating who is standing next to you.
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Akinwale segun and Fofa — you are NOT black or Africans.
you both have made mistakes in your narratives that just “outed” you as frauds and as white.
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@Linda You are a blind racist. Your mentality in your reply shows that you are so consumed by racial hatred that you can’t see straight, nor comprehend what you read, nor understand. Akinwale is telling it like it is, as am I. Until people learn to OPEN THEIR MINDS, this same idiotic type of race baiting and blaming will go on and on and on. You are just furthering it by jumping on to claim there are “mistakes” in the narrative. LOL! Ludicrous. Exactly what I was trying to illustrate above….no way no how, no eyes, no ears, no logic. You want to do something about slavery-NOW? Why don’t you go to Nigeria and start hunting down the minimum 40-50 young girls taken by Boko Haram and probably at least 3,000 miles away by now sold into sexual slavery for arms money. In other words. get a f’ing life and start DOING something for those who are CURRENTLY in slavery instead of going on an imaginary witch hunt in the comment boards pouring over “narratives” for closet racists. How pathetic and lonely. YOU are the racist! I will join Akinwale in giving a sound middle finger salute to all afro-centrist racists and euro-centrist racists. The African Continent is so much better off without you.
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@ Linda
I agree.
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Fofa
Your reaction to Linda’s 2 sentences tells me you are either emotionally unstable or just got caught. Word to the wise…..making longer paragraphs only seek to expose one more.
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“Fofa
@Linda You are a blind racist. Your mentality in your reply shows that you are so consumed by racial hatred that you can’t see straight, nor comprehend what you read, nor understand. Akinwale is telling it like it is, as am I.”
Linda says,
Really Fofa…. I can see quite well that you are a white boy trying to pretend you are black or African… and since you don’t know what race I am, you are shooting in the dark with your selective outrage.
Why get angry when presented with the truth 🙂
You HAVE said things which shows that you are NOT black or African… aren’t you curious as to what is giving you away?
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@linda you can see my dp, and my name, unless i was white then dipped myself in charlies chocolate factory, u might have racial insecurity but i know where am from and am proud of it
@fofa i concure with all you say, in south america, carribeans and central america u find descendant of black slaves too, u dont see them do race car or act lik cry baby, is pele or neymar called african brazilian or black brazilain? in central american and south america some of the blacks still speak african languages, wear african clothers, practice african religion, embrace their africaness they dont need add african label to their identity to have a link to their origin they even embrace we Africans better than most black Americans, they do dissociate themselves from their country men of different colour, they went through the same slave path but they forged their new identity and embraced eachother.
like i said both afrocentrist and eurocentrist keep changing the African history to suit their cause. BISHOP AJAYI crowther 1st west african bishop;his village was raided by fulanis of now northern Nigeria and was taking down south and sold as slave but was rescued by a bishop of a different colour in seirra leone to him which race is the villain, if you want to question my knowledge of my continent or the history of my ancestors with started thousands of years ago and not 400 yrs ago (since the sold called black history/history month only talks about slavery), you are free to question me am willing to give you names, of Nigerians who benefited from slavery then and their elite descendant or names of freed black slave who came to liberia and sierra Leone and enslaved the natives which gave birth to the wars they both had , and name of Africans who fought against Britain ending slavery.
the enemy isn’t white or black but in many and every colour
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Fofa and Akinwale segun.. both white and the same person..
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All of you need to stop insulting each other and yourselves, confusing the issues, and throwing undefined terms around like hot sweet potatoes. STOP IT! Focus on history and try to SAY something ABOUT history, not about each other. The books you need are NOT out of print, the knowledge is not obscure or hidden, and you need to calm down, cut out the hysteria and the chest beating and the narcissism and THINK. Here is a little bit of help, if you don’t care to go way back in this string and read my earlier comments from two or so years ago. Here is what I would call an addendum to my earlier comments:
The Triangle Slave Trade (not ‘Slavery’, which is a historically ancient, and far too historically and culturally non specific term to use in these discussion on this string) was carried on under an imprimatur of European government granted charters, and it was its intention to do what the word ‘corporation’ after all frankly announces (i.e., the Latin stem corpus + the derivational affix, ation): meaning, to ‘incorporate’ is to ‘embody’, to become physiognomic, to personify, to become a person as free of the king and of the state as the erstwhile mercantilist once sought to be; and ultimately the word clearly meant to become free of The State that replaced the king, the electorate that limits the actions of The State, and the law that limits the dealings of the corporation.
In 1600, The Trade embodied all of these realities while also looking far ahead to later, capitalist realities. Its history is an ironic one in that the slave trade can now be seen to be, from the vantage of historical distance, the penultimate model for current Corporate Realism. The Triangle Slave Trade was one of the largest, most lucrative endeavors in the history of the world, but most notably in the history capitalism (for it was capitalism’s very first seed money activity).
The twin myths that African ‘kings’ sold the millions of a continent’s stolen souls into the horror of the Trans Atlantic Industry, and that ‘racism’ is the raison d’être for this immense and systematic industry, which grew to be known as ‘the slave trade,’ are persistent and pernicious myths. They are persistent and pernicious in the way that only American mythologies can or can dare to be: persistent in that both are only incidentally rooted in truth or touch upon some kernel of truth; pernicious in the way that American myth always resolutely performs slight-of-hand, changes the subject of a critique, and buries deeper complexity while flattening out context in an attempt to divert critique, to fashion narratives pleasing to the orthodoxy of the collective American mind, or simply to fashion another mindless slogan or jingle for consumption and for advertising’s sake. What often gets ‘advertised’ is the ‘commodity’ of Western rationalism, Western humanism, manifest destiny, and American (Western) exceptionalism.
As to the first myth, even if we will not go into great detail here, we will point out that although slavery existed on the African continent prior to the Trans Atlantic Trade, as it had existed in most world cultures, and indeed existed in Europe prior to the slave trade, we need to look specifically at Portugal as the very first European power to engage in the Trans Atlantic Industry of slavery. Though the Arab and Muslim peoples had long traded with Europe, there is a crucial history of Portuguese activity in Africa and Spanish activity in the Indies (Williams, Pages 18-29) that led up to the Trans Atlantic industry that it is necessary to examine in order to understand the roots of the industry and its nature. The Portuguese lacked safe land routes over north Africa due to the disruption and hostilities stirred up by The Crusades, though for 800 years Muslims had journeyed across the Sahara to trade with Europe and presumably also had free access to India from bases on Africa’s east coast. The Portuguese in the latter part of the 15th century, in any event, engaged in excursions, trade, violence, and finally slave transactions down the Atlantic coast of The Continent to Guinea, and Muaritania, across the Sahara, and through Senegal and Gambia, seeking gold, ivory, pepper, and spices at first, and then seeking citizens to take into slavery. In the process, the Portuguese had to trade with, deal with, and make alliances with a Muslim empire in the north.
This Portuguese activity stretched from 1430-1500 and beyond. Only scant markets existed for African slaves to be sold in Europe, and only a few were used as free labor on Mediterranean sugar plantations, but the Portuguese made lucrative business of transporting slaves from trading post to trading post and became a utility for Muslim traders along The Continent’s Atlantic coast. Those of the Muslim merchants so inclined needed slaves. By 1470 Portuguese slavers had reached as far south as the Benin under-coast, and were bringing with them horses, copper, wine, firearms, and ammunition. They sought and achieved, large payments in gold in return for their service to the Muslim empire, for the Muslims had engaged in a purely African slave trade for some two hundred years prior to Portuguese activities along the coast (in fact, the nature of the Muslim slave trade was directed principally at acquiring ‘pack’ slaves; mostly dark skinned Africans to be used as pack animals would have been—to carry goods and wares for their Muslim masters along trade routes. Muslims used slaves also as body servants, and the full spectrum of involuntary servitude—from war spoils to captive servants, to indentured servants, to temporary and lifelong bondage—existed among Muslim slavers.)
This arrangement lasted until the end of the 15th century, but by 1500, the dawn of the Renaissance, of the rise of mercantilism, and of the rise of corporate power, Vasco Núńez da Gama had circumnavigated the entire African Atlantic coast, sailing around the “Cape of Good Hope” to the Indian Ocean and a sea route to India (1486, actually, had been the year that Bartholomew Diaz first circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope. But it was da Gama who sailed all the way to India, in the year 1498, to open a new trade route to the Far East, creating a new source of Portuguese wealth).
By the early 1500’s Portugal had trading posts not only along the Atlantic coast of Africa, but also along the South Eastern coast, in India, in China, in Japan, and in the so-called ‘East Indies’. Meanwhile sugar plantations had been established in the Cape Verde and Canary Islands, and Columbus had made several voyages between Europe and the new world. Accordingly, Portuguese business affairs drastically changed, veering toward greater and greater emphasis upon trade in flesh, for in the year 1500 the Portuguese had already bought, captured, or bartered with the Muslims for 81,000 slaves to supply the burgeoning Portuguese sugar plantations, which were thriving in a brand new Columbian (colonial) age.
What has always been obfuscated about African history, geography, and politics are the facts that: 1.There is no such country as ‘Africa’, for Africa is not a homogeneous state, nor was it so in the 15th and 16th centuries. 2. The history of the ‘trade’ is demonstrably a case of a trans-global trade for the Portuguese, the British, and other Europeans, but of local political and economic necessity or profit for agents of slavers on The Continent. Thus,
1.1 The word, ‘Africa’ is a misnomer.
In the words of Nobel Prize Lauriat, Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, “Africa is a continent, and upon that continent both in pre Columbian and post Columbian times, there existed and still exists, not one nation, but an absolute diversity of nations, kingdoms, regions, and states.” One can imagine how this very heterogeneity upon The Continent must have contributed to the relative ease by which European colonizers divided and conquered African people(s) during the colonialist period that followed hard upon the heels of the era of the trans Atlantic trade. It is therefore crucial to ask, which ‘Africans’ are being referred to by armature historians? It is in no way rational for instance, to describe ‘Europeans’ in an unqualified sense as having ‘run the slave trade’, for Europe is not an undifferentiated continent with a common history, language, or political heritage. As we have shown, Spain, which is in Europe, was an African kingdom, and then an African colony and annex for approximately 800 years. Portugal, not Britain, as is commonly assumed, was first to initiate mass transportation of slaves away from The Continent, while some other of the European nations did not engage in the trans Atlantic trade at all, but rather entered Africa in earnest and in violence only after the start of the colonial period (1700-1970, roughly), and were colonizers, not slavers, per se, from the 17th and 18th century incursions of the British and the French military in North Afrika, to the totalitarian rule of the Dutch in South Africa, and the horrors of King Leopold and the Belgians in the Congo region. Scholar, Oscar L. Beard, in Atlanta, writes that,
1.2 The period from the beginning of the TransAtlantic African Slave so-called Trade (1500) to the demarcation of Africa into colonies in the late 1800s is one of the most documented periods in World History. Yet, with the exception of the renegade African slave raider Tippu Tip of the Congo (Muslim name, Hamed bin Muhammad bin Juna al-Marjebi) who was collaborating with the White Arabs (also called Red Arabs) there is little documentation of independent African slave raiding.
By independent is meant [that an ‘independent’ situation would one in which] there were no credible threats, intoxicants or use of force by Whites to force or deceive the African into slave raiding or slave trading and that the raider himself was not enslaved to Whites at the time of slave raiding or “trading”.
Trade implies human-to-human mutuality without force. This was certainly not the general scenario for the TransAtlantic so-called Trade in African slaves. Indeed, it was the Portuguese who initiated the European phase of slave raiding in Africa by attacking a sleeping village in 1444 and carting away the survivors to work for free in Europe. (Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery?, by Oscar L. Beard, retrievable at http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/145.html)
1.3 In the wake of Columbus’ exposure of the potential agricultural wealth of the ‘New World,’ the Portuguese were not as interested in spices as they were in human flesh, and so inaugurated the eventual, historically unprecedented kidnapping of millions. The Atlantic Slave Trade had commenced. Even where the Portuguese are concerned, their activities as slavers prior to the Columbian period is distinct from their activities as slavers after, for:
2. The ‘trade’ after Columbus became something unique
Unique to the prior history of slavery in both Africa and Europe, was a corporate, globalized, massified industry. Mass production, mass purchase, mass processing, and mass transit were all the elements of eventual Taylorism (Fordist mass production, characteristic of the coming industrial revolution and characteristic of the soon-to-come genocide against Congolese by Belgium and genocide against Jews by Germany) that would signify mature capitalism. If the Portuguese were mercantilist slavers before the Columbian era, they were capitalists after, and so were the European nations that followed Portugal in the trade.
3. Rise of the Modern Nation State: Lords, Merchants, and Thugs
If we look at pages 30-57 of Williams’ text (chapter 4 and 5) we can see the falsehood of the second of the ‘twin myths’: that racism was the raison d’être for the trans Atlantic trade. It was not; capitalism’s headlong rush to power, was. As we said, not slavery, which had been common in Europe, Africa, and globally for thousands of years, but the Trans Atlantic (Triangle) Slave Trade, was a fait accompli due to the growth of charter incorporation.
The Triangle Trade, not slavery, is the true focus of this discussion. All that we have addressed so far, the beginnings of what would become a horrific mass expropriation of human souls from Africa, was oddly and also necessarily co existential with the evolution of the nation-state. More ironic still, the slave trade commenced within an atmosphere of growing human freedom created by the Nation state as an institution against human bondage.
For the nation-state as it was born and emerged between AD 1200 and 1600, was undeniably a causal factor in the birth of the principle of individual freedom under the law. Freedom as a function of the rise of nation-states both enabled the slave trade and also rendered it a transparent, repugnant activity; thus, it was an activity that needed to be shrouded in a newly invented concept of racial essentialism for the sake of rationalizing a massively anti-humanist activity during an era of growing respect or humanism.
There was, nevertheless, an inevitability in the history of the development of a Transatlantic Slave Trade, given the reality of the pure profit motive adopted by the nascent and the early corporations. The creation of the modern concept of ‘racism’ was rooted in the advent of the corporation. The formation and ‘chartering’ of the Stora Kopparbërg in Sweden (AD 1347), of the Dutch East India Corporation (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie ) in The Netherlands (AD 1602), the and the granting by the British Crown of a monopoly to the British East India Corporation (AD 1600) commenced the history of corporate profit motive that led to the spread of the corporate model, the invention of the trust company and of limited partnerships in the 19th century, corporate fascism in the 20thcentury, and the current 21st century model of the multinational hegemonic corporations, such as Blackwater, and without borders or national identity (the incorporeal corporation).
Historians like Richard Bean typically understand ‘nation-states’ (i.e. Bean’s essay, War and the Birth of the Nation-State, from Journal of Economic History, Vol. 33, #1, March, 1973) as entities that organized the forces of ‘civilization’. By his definition statism distinctly positions itself against, or after, feudalism and monarchism proper. It nurtured ‘civilization’ and its accouterments: egalitarianism, humanism, early mercantilist energies, post-Athenian/Post-Periclesian democracy, collective administration, and individual/minority rights. Statism literally gave succor in Central Europe to the post-Romanesque notion of individual freedom and individual rights.
This is so even while Statism admittedly was a force for repression of ethnic difference, local autonomy, and pluralism i.e., the 19th century Italian phenomenon of Il Risorgimento. It must be admitted that the Risorgimento though it generally involved the birth of nationalist sentiments that drove out Austrian, Napoleonic, and Habsburgean foreign rule, particularly in the Italian-speaking northeast, nevertheless was a movement that contained and crushed dissent from annexed states and among defiant regionalist movements. Secessionists, particularly the Sicilians, protested and revolted against the centralized, authoritarian Italian state, and late 19th century resistance to Statism was particularly strong among the southern peasants who refused to accept the Risorgimento government. It goes without saying that certain Spanish, Arabic, and Greater Metropolitan African elements within the southern population continued to see areas such as Sicily, Messina, and Corsica as distinct, independent entities. The savage repression of regional autonomy and difference across the Italian peninsula was part and parcel of Italian evolution toward statism.
Still, statism across Europe in toto, created a social milieu in which social cruelties and barbarisms (such as slavery) could no longer be transparent, but became opaque. Unlike the milieu of ancient Rome, of ancient Carthage, or ancient Persia and Egypt/Kemet, the new milieu and age that followed the 13th century forced signing by King John of the Magna Carta and that included the 18th century rationalism and empiricism of the enlightenment and Renaissance (both of African origin, say many historians such as Cheikh Anta Diop and Martin Bernal) was one in which slavery needed a new justification since it arose out of a new impetus.
Certainly, even the archaic and antique periods of Europe, followed by the classical period and then the dark ages, all featured African influence, but the unique aspect of the African and Asian influences of the enlightenment itself was the drive toward democracy (first in Greece, then in Rome, and later in France and the Americas) that this particular period (from AD 1400-1800) entailed.
Slavery was both a continued barbarism in Europe even after the enlightenment, a peculiarly altered practice because of the enlightenment and the statism that accompanied it (since slavery became a more mechanistic, corporate practice), as well as an aberrant practice whose days were necessarily numbered due to the very mercantilist and statist forces (under waning monarchism and feudalism) that drove the slave trade trough those forces’ support of the slave trade.
Prof Ray Waller
Dep of Africanan Studies
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan USA
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In short, silly rabbits, “The Enemy” indeed is NOT ‘white’ (Anglo) or ‘Black’, NOR is the enemy ‘in many colors’ (STOP it with the rainbow arguments, ok??). The ENEMY was, is, and shall always be, CAPITALISM, which has enslaved you, me, the ‘Whites’, Africans (remember a little thing called colonialism, post colonialism, and neo colonialism–all part of the corporate capitalist project?), Americans, Asians, Europeans, dogs, cats, rats, elephants, and all our mothers. Good morning. Did you all sleep well? Smell the coffee?
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@Rayfield…thank you and I concur with your statements.
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Your synopsis is well stated and correctly identifies the cause of the international slave trade, explaining the “African” diaspora.
However, in such identifying, can there be an assigned blame? Because it is the “blame game” the American Blacks use when seeking unjustified so-called “”reparations” from the United States of America. Blacks would never have been here in the first place but for the several European countries highly involved in this nefarious trade.
As well, it can not be denied that “some” tribal kings did indeed sell their captive prisoners of tribal wars to “some” of these European buyers in exchange for something, anyway.
SO, with much “blame” to spread, and given the facts that, in 2012 dollars, the United States of American has expended trillions of dollars since 1865 in indirect “reparations”, seems to me that debt could be called “Paid-In-Full”, if not even an “overpaid”
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“seems to me that debt could be called “Paid-In-Full”, if not even an “overpaid””—-That can only be said if a clear dollar amount can be assessed.
For starters how much is a life. Is a life worth a million? Trillion?
Then you will have to assess how much an hour should they have been paid for their labor. Should overtime be included considering many probably worked well past sun up and sun down. Let us not forget injustices that occurred after slavery(because reparations is not just about slavery). Now if I was to calculate this up then I would say nothing has been paid in full and not even a dent has been made in it.
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“I would say nothing has been paid in full and not even a dent has been made in it.”
OH, Please!! Get real!! This whole so-called “”reparartions”” movement is nothing more than a scam designed to use the primary weapon of Lucifer, guilt, to extort “free money” from someone else.
However, addressing the issue of money, explain this. How was it that some slaves were able to buy their freedom? Obviously, some were able to work and earn wages. And when one considers the price of just one slave, (translating 1850 dollars into 2011 dollars, depending on the skill and character of said slave, the price could be from $12,000 to $176,000) the price of freedom was considerable. Yet, some did earn the necessary amount.
Also, what is to be made of the Black slave owners, some whom were born slaves themselves, bought their freedom (see above) and became plantation owners themselves, owning upwards of over 100 slaves.
Like I said, this whole thing is but a scam, to enrich people who can not do it themselves. Based on the premises of this scam, should all of the very rich Blacks in this country to day be made to hand over all of their wealth, leaving themselves just enough to get by? Those with a personal net worth of $500,000 or more?
Lastly, “For starters how much is a life. Is a life worth a million? Trillion?”
Well, what about the more than 700,000 lives taken during the War of yankee Aggression? Their lives had value, not to mention what they might have contributed to this American society, plus whatever their children and future descendents could have done? There were many veterans on both the American side and the yankee side that went on to be inventors, innovators, businessmen, doctors, statesmen, and so on. Coca-Cola was invented by a captain of a Georgia cavalry regiment.
So yes!! ABSOTIVELY, POSILUTELY, mark it PAID-IN-FULL!!!
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@Jimmy Shirley…..In a court of law in the United States of America reparations in a case such as this would be based not, on an individual basis as you try to water down the atrocities with rhetoric and dissonance, but on NEGLIGENCE and the JUDGES decision based on suffering, wages, social and economical conditions brought on by such events, oppression, crimes against human beings, etc. You like to make excuses for atrocities committed by the U.S. by laying blame on African Tribal leaders and Europeans who started the slave trade. However, who is more to blame, the Tribal leader sitting among his people or the Ship full of wealthy white men who traveled half way around the world to purchase human beings or kidnap if necessary. It was the white man of the U.S. who sought out human beings and raped, murdered, tortured, hung, enslaved, etc. In a court of law in this country the one negligent is responsible for the beginning, the middle and the end period. No excuses, no transfer of blame to other countries, no absolutely absurd and EVIL notions that by raping little girls, tossing men-women-children into the ocean, hanging young boys, torturing human beings and till this day oppressing people makes them LUCKY TO BE AMERICANS and they should just take there lumps like everybody else. Well tell me this how many white Americans since the discovery of this great land have been enslaved by this country? How many were eradicated by the U.S. government like the Native American? How many were thrown into the ocean because they were sick? This country has only been successful because of it’s treatment of Blacks, Native Americans, Chinese slaves, etc…They deserve reparations and a cut of the enormous wealth created by HUMAN ATROCITIES. If we are a civilized God fearing country then we would do everything in our power to make up for the atrocities committed against humanity and if the only way to do such a thing is money then so be it. Considering that in 1600 Blacks were the lowest paid, owned the least amount of land, had the least amount of money, had the least amount of jobs, etc…and that in 2014 the same is true of Blacks in this country and that the civil war was fought in 1860 but civil rights were not passed until just 40 years ago we can assume that there are other factors at work here and this country is responsible for their condition, PERIOD!!!
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@Rayfield…You are a Deity of Wisdom sir and I worship your vast amount of knowledge, your sensibility and your humanity and I thank Julian Abagond for creating a place where I can come and converse with such marvelous human beings. I learn so much here by so many and I get to air my frustrations with those that perpetuate EVIL and who will never inherit the Kingdom of God…Thanks Guys.
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@Sharina
Sharina, it seems to me that you nailed the hell out of the whole issue of ‘assessing’ reparations, which shuts up every one of the apparently slow-witted and venal commentators here who are spouting off against the legal reality of reparations. We should make no mistake about how fatuous the objections to your argument are–one may as well shout at the sun as try to de-legitimize an coherent argument such as you are trying to invoke, and doing a good job of it, too: Ignorantia juris non excusat–ignorance of the law you are invoking is no excuse for those who wish to disagree with you. Reparations is a LEGAL REALITY with GLOBAL precedent, not just some bugaboo of the Black mind. Everybody reading this, Sharina is addressing real legal practice that has in many cases scooped some big dollars out of the major European and American corporations responsible for, or that turned a blind eye to, or that directly or indirectly profited, for instance, from, the Holocaust–those same corporations and banks, by the way, that also organized, funded, and profited from the Triangle Corporate Slave Trade (BINGO!)
Sharina, what you say is not about revenge, or punishment, or even about obligation in terms of ‘race’ or necessarily of individual Americans who yes in reality did profit from the White Supremacy that was enabled by slavery as a two to four hundred year institution on these shores; rather, it is about the REAL MONEY STOLEN and HIDDEN FROM VIEW by the REAL thieves–America’s corporate wealth, a great deal of which rightfully belongs to not just the Black descendants of slaves but also ought to be assessed for repayment to the American Italians, Chinese-Americans, and Irish=American victims of slavery, wage slavery, terrorism, murder, mutilation, and forced ghettoisation and forced labor. Blacks are merely chief among a whole host of victims of post-colonial capitalism, The reason people go crazy and go inarticulate over the issue is because opening the books on the true dimension of capitalism’s and industrialism’s crimes against humanity would be like opening up a rotten crypt full of filthy corpses America created (Sacco and Vanzetti, The Haymarket Affair, the murder of folk singer Joe Hill, the crimes against Appalachia’s citizens by the coal industry,the ongoing sickness, birth defects, and deaths suffered even today by the citizens of Kentucky under the strip mining and industrial pollution poured down onto them by mining companies, the crimes of the Pinkerton strike breakers, the theft of whole states and whole cities by corporate vampires (most recently the deliberate lawless theft of New Orleans by corporate land barons in the wake of Katrina), the massacres at Mattawan, the murder of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the mass lynchings of Jews and Italians throughout out the early twentieth century, and on and on…none of these things of course rising to the level of genocides committed against Jews in Germany and Blacks in America, but each of them betraying the true nature of corporate capitalism and oligarchical government abuse of power: each one deserving redress and reparation, or at least acknowledgement and the disinfectant of bringing it all to the light of day so that the children can learn and know this real history of America beneath the treacle and myths.
Sharina your analysis is one of the most lucid, and intelligent things I’ve read in a while on any public post addressing the issue of reparations in a non-legal, informal, and popular medium such as a discussion site (a medium that gives rise to non-supported, and non or anti-historical banter rather than analysis, and thus often unfocused and very often goofy proclamations). Your analysis points to some clarity and some solid ldgal principles that should be openly discussed:
“For starters how much is a life. Is a life worth a million? Trillion….
Then you will have to assess how much an hour should they have been paid for their labor. Should overtime be included considering many probably worked well past sun up and sun down. Let us not forget injustices that occurred after slavery(because reparations is not just about slavery). Now if I was to calculate this up then I would say nothing has been paid in full and not even a dent has been made in it.”
Your comment, Sharina, exposes what the issue of reparations is REALLY about: not a ‘hustle’ as Jimmy L. Shirley, Jr. (sounds like either a die hard Anglo Dixie Boy, or a self-abnegating conservative Black), but economic value, worth, and DEBT accrued both for two hundred years of COMPOUNDED interest and profit (as you say, Sharina, reparations is about more than slavery per se) and for INJURY (injury is known in modern American law as TORTS); torts are injuries that demand a legal process to assess damages and to make the injured party or group or even nation, whole again.
This concept is not just a fig newton of the African American imagination, and sorry, Jimmy L. Shirley Jr., you are an overt racist (either of the Anglo sort, or a Black man suffering internalized racism) to be irresponsibly, and I might say offensively, spouting the gibberish you are spouting, though I suspect you just don’t know any better–you are repeating a shopworn fallacious arguemnt of the kind that is a symptom of the sickness America suffers from that leads Anglos and conservatives to thinking or assuming that African Americans are not legitimate participants in open discussion of our own heritge, identity, desires, demands, and claims for justice, but are the possessions of America, of Anglos, and of popular thought who should shut up and be happy with our heritage of injustice and abuse. Jimmy, neither I, nor Sharina, nor any other African American descendant of slaves are bound in any way to give a crap about what you think or what you arrogantly proclaim NON STARE DECISIS–that is, your talking without any clear knowledge of or reference to fully settled law and international precedent. Sharina is, even if she lacks the legal language, referring to solid, legal precedent, whereas you are blowing off steam and talking out of the side of your neck:
“it is the “blame game” the American Blacks use when seeking unjustified so-called “”reparations” from the United States of America. Blacks would never have been here in the first place but for the several European countries highly involved in this nefarious trade.”
Whew! ‘so called’ reparations? Is that like the ‘so called’ bill of rights or the ‘so called’ maritime laws, or ‘so called’ voting rights act?? In your disregard for the material reality of reparations law, and your corny attempt to point at Europe and say ‘they did it, not us!’ you sound like a little boy caught with his pants down. Would you actually be foolish enough to try that fallacious dodge out in defending Nazi atrocities? After all, if not for the Poles who helped the Nazis capture Polish Jews and kill them, the death camps might not have gotten built in Poland, or far fewer of them would have gotten up and running before the war drew to a close. So is that a defense the Nazi board members at the Nuremberg trials who’d run the banks and corporations (such as BASF, or IG Farben, or BAYER) could justifiably use to avoid serving prison sentences or to argue that their corporations should avoid paying reparations? As a matter of fact, they tried to, and FAILED at Nuremberg, in the World Court, in the Justice system of The Hague, and in the United Nations. The banks and corporations of Europe that profited even indirectly from the Holocaust were compelled to PAY after judicial authorities had gone through a proper process of discovery, of preliminary forensic financial investigations, and of assessment of TORTS and of theft of value, life, worth, wealth, and property. Check out just one of the hundreds of websites that document this reality of legal precedent and the righteous reparations that resulted from the legal precedents that provided for redressing Nazi crimes:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/claims1.html
Jimmy, your seat-of-the-pants, off the cuff and off the bush ‘assessment’ of non tort efficacy (et non pertinet ad eum de jure–without concern for law, in the Latin legal language, is almost as obnoxious as it is solipsistic. Most Americans sound like you: as if they were born and raised and educated inside a shoe box. Hey, there is a whole world of precedent for exactly what Sharina is saying. I myself don’t teach reparations history and law very often (and yes, though you don’t seem to know it, there is history and law behind procedural reparations), but on the occasions that I have, the books I use, the case law, and the source materials are always overwhelmingly convincing to 99% of my students, Anglo and Black, Northern and Dixie. Your imaginary case reference to the confederate losers of the Civil War is a special case related not at all to the cases of crimes against humanity, mass kidnapping, forced labor, and genocide, but to conflict law, those would be the legal precedents cited (correctly) by the Germans after they lost WWI and were unjustly victimized by the Treaty of Versailles. However, those same precedents did not belong in the former German Nazis’ mouths, my friend, following WWII: the German nation’s unprecedented destruction under arms and in regular armament, and their war crimes against Russia, America, England, Poland, Austria, and France and Belgium were so atrocious and inhuman, violating so many stipulations of the Geneva Conventions, that the world saw fit (correctly) to punish the hell out of Germany. Likewise, Prescott Bush here in America (yes, W. Bush’s grandfathter) was charged with treason and had his wealth and his bank taken from him by the US Justice Department for aiding abetting crimes against humanity in arming, funding, and supporting Hitler. Read a few books, if that surprises you.
From the African American viewpoint (LEGAL viewpoint), most of what is owed us is owed not particularly by ordinary southern citizens who are descended from slave holders, but definitely owed us by southern corporations that grew root, branch and bloom out of two hundred years of free labor (PROFIT) as well as torture, rape, murder, mutilation, deprivation of wages, alienation of familial bonds, terrorism, involuntary expatriation due to kidnapping, mental suffering, theft, human trafficking, and unlawful restraint. Some of those corporations are PLANTERS, WINN DIXIE, MOBILE AND GIRARD, THE SOUTHERN BANK OF ST. LOUIS, NORFOLK SOUTHERN, CITIZENS BANK AND CANAL BANK OF LOUISIANA, now JP MORGAN Chase Bank, various agricultural combines and cotton exchanges now related to EXXON, and to AIG, as well as various state and local governments in the south who have apologized for slavery’s benefit to themselves and some of whom have actually offered limited, partial material reparation to slaves’ descendants, including Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.
Official estimates exist for what amount of total reparations ought to be made, so Sharina need not be asked to re-invent the wheel. Harper’s Magazine has advanced a widely reported estimate that the total reparation owed is more than 100 trillion dollars (based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865). Duly compounded interest of 6% as established by standard Wall Street and World Bank financial practices, ought to be imposed. Various financial experts suggest that part of this amount should be charged to the United States government to be paid to the descendants of slaves (regardless of apparent color) whose ancestors were held in the United States, north and south, and in some limited number of American territories, although many experts suggest that the U.S., having been in legal existence since 1789, ought to pay only a portion of that debt (approximately 40 trillion dollars in current valuation). The remaining 60 trillion dollars ought to be payed not by the descendants of American slave holders, either Black or Anglo slave holders, but by American corporations, with the American justice department bringing power and influence to bear on France, Germany, Great Britain, Portugal, and Spain to assess their own obligations in Pounds Sterling or in Gold Standard valuation, and pay the debt that they owe. This model is perfectly consistent with global reparations projects, and here at home, has been established as a standard for dealing with the multiple Native American claims for redress and reparations: American courts, while refusing to order actual reparations, often deferring to judicial authority and to Congress (which has not moved one inch to take up the challenge) have nevertheless issued decisions and established precedents suggesting that land and personal injury liability should not be relinquished back to Native nations, nor levied against private American citizens to in-debt them to Native Americans except in simple legal civil offenses such as assault, robbery, murder, or other financial and bodily crimes committed here and now, not historically. This seems a defeat, but in reality establishes the clear path to reparations for Native peoples by Congress, getting off its ass on the issue, and passing laws compelling American corporations and government agencies (such as the criminal Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Interior, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Justice Department and Department of Agriculture, and the FBI, all of whom are guilty of theft, murder, violations of civil and human rights, torture, and genocide against Native peoples) requiring redress and repayment in government lands to be ceded back to Natives, and in cash and bonds and vestiture in payment for their collective crimes,
So we can see, this is a matter not of Sharina’s illegitimate fantasies, but of STARE DECISIS–(the Western common law legal principle that demands that courts must follow the precedents of superior courts (that is, vertical stare decisis) and follow their own prior decisions (what is called horizontal stare decisis). The full Latin phrase means that ‘once something has been decided by courts, it must be left decided by courts. STARE DECISIS is rooted in a two thousand year old legal principle reaching all the way back to the Roman law of civitas and Roman common law.
The Romans, mass slave holders though they were, inveterate oppressors, nevertheless established a rule of law that at least loosley recognized TORT; they even established and recognized the debt a slave owner can be seen as having toward slaves and former slaves, at least during The Republic (though much Roman civil law degenerated once Rome became an Empire). Sister Sharina, the point is that you have the whole history of law and legal precedent in the West to stand on with every word you said. Brother William put the summary best:
“In a court of law in this country the one negligent is responsible for the beginning, the middle and the end period. No excuses, no transfer of blame to other countries, no absolutely absurd and EVIL notions that by raping little girls, tossing men-women-children into the ocean, hanging young boys, torturing human beings and till this day oppressing people makes them LUCKY TO BE AMERICANS and they should just take there lumps like everybody else. Well tell me this how many white Americans since the discovery of this great land have been enslaved by this country? How many were eradicated by the U.S. government like the Native American? How many were thrown into the ocean because they were sick? This country has only been successful because of it’s treatment of Blacks, Native Americans, Chinese slaves, etc…They deserve reparations and a cut of the enormous wealth created by HUMAN ATROCITIES.”
This is not his ‘opinion’, it is settled law (DE JURE and STARE DECISIS), Sharina and William hardly need defend the claims they are making. Only a people or a nation with their heads in the sand (guilty and hiding from legal obligation, and lazy on top of it) could rationally deny policies and procedures clarified and enforced globally since the end of WWII (involving incomplete but nevertheless clearly articulated obligations by nations and by global corporation to right their wrongs against The Irish nationalists, the Palestinians, the South African people, The Sicilians,the Maori of New Zealand, the Catalans and the Basque Autonomous Community of Spain, the Pyrenees Atlantiques of France, the Indios of the Amazon Region, the Tagalogs of the Philippines, and on and on. There are long established and perfectly legitimate legal policies and procedures that can be invoked by African Americans as free citizens and full human beings. The only question is this: why have we allowed the enormous crimes against us to go un-addressed for so long? My own congressional representative here in Detroit, John Conyers, is one of the major authors and supporters of the reparations bill that has been stuck in Congress for years with no action planned. Sharina is absolutely on target to point out that there is a valid JUDICIAL avenue to full reparations available to all victims of corporate crimes, and to the descendants of the victims.
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@ Prof. R.A.W.,
Thank you for your time. It’s a treat, when come and drop the knowledge. I truly do appreciate it. 🙂
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@Jimmy Shirley in Regards to what Rayfield and Sharina said……..You have just been schooled by two of the best, learn from this!
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@Thaddeus:
So where do you get the necessary neutral background knowledge to be able to “think them through”, without devoting your life to an Anthropology degree since you want to study something else for your degree and want to do and learn more in life than just that?
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@Thaddeus: How would one gain enough background in this to be what you would consider reasonably conversant (i.e. more than how you seem to consider “most” other posters here to be), while also allowing for time to get professional-level understanding and experience in some other field?
Just wondering.
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@ mike4ty4
Thad will not be able to answer you since he was banned,
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@mike4ty4:
Mike, Listen. STOP thinking like your brain is a brick frozen in ice. I assume you are an American. Go back and read just a little about American culture and American intellectual history. Read “The American Indian Intellectual Tradition: An Anthology of Writings from 1772 to 1972” by David Martínez, in order to get a clear sense of what the groundwork is of the tradition of THINKING on these shores, and then read “The American Intellectual Tradition: Volume I: 1630-1865” and “The American Intellectual Tradition, Vol. II: 1865 to the Present”, both by David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper. That is a good place to start with just simply clearing your head and THINKING about things–free thought. Try to remember that the only reason you seem so confused and seem to have so much noise and smoke in your head is because one, you clearly aren’t reading enough BOOKS and are paying attention to popular culture and things ‘people say’, and two, you are paying attention to TV news shows, TV talking heads, and commercial consumerism and such.
You belong to a great modern cultural tradition–American thinkers. When you have enough reading under your belt in the history of American thought, tackle some of the great American intellectuals who made that history, the people most of whom owed VERY LITTLE to universities, colleges, and the falsehood of arbitrary division of scholarship into ‘departments’ and ‘college programs’. American organic intellectuals (people who think on their own, write on their own, and publish in the public sphere), have made American culture the torchlight of the world in the 30’s through the 80’s.
Going a ways toward also crushing the American id-jits who babble on and on about the psychotic, clinically insane Ayn Rand and herBIGOT EROTICA such as “Atlas Shrugged” and that cult pulp, hack novel, “The Fountainhead”, I’ve mentioned just a few of our best American writers and thinkers in previous posts: James Agee Hannah Arendt (transplanted American, and the antidote to Ayn Rand), James Baldwin, Carl Bernstein, Margaret Rourk-White, Ed Bradley, Jimmy Breslin, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Michael Herr, Seymour Hersh, Walter Lippmann, Bill Moyers, Edward R. Murrow, Mike Royko, Gay Talese, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, I.F. Stone, Tom Wolfe, William F. Buckley, Nat Hentoff, the beloved “A Peoples’ History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, the glorious beauty of the works of David Halbertam, and the processional majesty of Arthur Schlesinger (I first read Schlesinger when I was 14, despite my Jr. High teacher warning me I was ‘too young’ to read him), Joan Didion, W.E.B. Dubois, Gloria Steinem, Frederick Douglass, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, Xam Cartier, my heroine, Susan Sontag, the American goddess, Pauline Kael whose death in 2001 was overshadowed by the 911 attacks, Lincoln Steffens, George Polk, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abigail Adams, and Ben Franklin.
Corporate finance capitalism has not only ruined our economy, a dynamic modern economy that used to create wealth by making things, that used to be productive, that built Hoover Dam in the heart of the depression, that unleashed the Tennessee Valley Authority to pave and bridge and de-swamp and modernize part of a southern state, that raised gargantuan skyscrapers in Manhattan and also raised a grand middle class that was the envy of the world, that defeated fascism, but is now idle, cowed, and humiliated. Corporate finance capitalism not only ruined that astounding economy but it also ruined and addled our minds, with McDonald’s, Fructose, destruction of our educational system, Burger King, and University of Phoenix false Mac’higher Mac’education.
Look, you don’t need to “get the necessary neutral background” (what in the heck is ‘neutral background’) knowledge to be able to “think them through”, without devoting your life to an Anthropology degree since you want to study something else for your degree…” You have the mule backwards and the cart under the mule, Man, you are confused! What does a ‘degree’ have to do with anything?? I am an actual university professor, and even I know better than to think that there is not any such thing as ‘neutral background knowledge (??)”. There is no sense to the idea that what you ‘study’ in ‘school’ for a ‘degree’ has anything (necessarily) to do with what you KNOW, what you can LEARN, and most of all, with your Goddess Columbia-given right to THINK. If half those people I mentioned up top had depended on their ‘degrees’ to be intellectuals we would never have been blessed with their great works, great thoughts, and great influence on our country.
There is no such thing as “professional-level understanding”. That is an incoherent, capitalist, market product, consumption-oriented, ruling class concept. No ‘professional’ intellectual I can think of ever contributed anything worthwhile to human spirit and human thought. If you can think of one, tell me who he or she was. You don’t need any steeenking badges, or business cards, or professional degrees to THINK, man. Just READ.
One of America’s greatest anthropologists, Clifford Geertz, was in the military before he even stepped foot on a college campus, and even as a college student he did what the best cultural anthropologists always do: he LEFT the campus to go out into the field where he did most of his thinking, study, and work. Paul Farmer, BEFORE entering medical school and pioneering medical anthropology did the best of his fieldwork and experimental research in Haiti. Franz Boas began not as an Anthropologist but as an editor at a scientific journal. Despite the drawback of his academic ‘career’ he maintained interests in dozens of disciplines, including physics, geography, ethnology, linguistics, and statistical analysis. He was one of the originators of ‘comprehensive anthropology’–rejecting the stiff, ‘academic’ single track thinking of undergraduate schools in favor of holisitic intellectualism; understanding everything in the context of everything else. There is no physics without chemistry and math, no math without philosophy, and no philosophy without linguistis and no linguistics without the physiology of the brain (ergo, psycho-linguistics)!
Don’t look for orthodox, ‘professional’ thinkers, like the tumid Mr.Thaddeus (self proclaimed, mostly, I think), to tell you what to think. Think for yourself. Fuel your brain for yourself, stop using college degree ideology as an excuse to mollycoddle yourself. College degree studies today, unfortunately are not what they used to be. They are largely illegitimate if THINKING and CRITICAL ANALYSIS are what we are talking about. There are only a few exceptions, such as The New School for Social Research, the Yale Theatrical program, The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM’s) lively connection to and exchanges with the organic arts cultures of New York City, Columbia’s great ‘Contemporary Civilizations’ Program, or Cornell University’s multidisciplinary programs, all of which recall the intellectual academic movements of the early twentieth century with their deliberate ties to organic culture. The early twentieth century of course offered such symbiotic relationships between the academy and the organic arts as the Beat poets who had ties to and had descended from New York academia, the great jazz musicians such as Miles Davis who also went to Julliard, and the large number of great American artists who came out of places like CalArts but then went into the government Federal Art Project, and the Works Projects Administration (the WPA).
We have allowed ourselves to forget who we are as Americans. That is why mediocre, corrupt politicians are now selling us out and why ignorant, foolish ‘administrators,’ human resources middlebrow managers, and professors who haven’t read a book since they took their PhD’s thirty years ago, are ruining our public as well as our commercial institutions.
Sterling Stucky is the author of a book called “Slave Culture.” It focuses on the foundations of African American culture and thought–and the many flaws, points of self hatred, self annihilation, and powerlessness/helplessness that haunt the Black descendants of the overwhelmingly dehumanizing, genocidal American slave culture. You know what? I have been thinking and even teaching that Stucky’s book just might as well be taken to be about ALL Americans of ALL ethnicities now that our culture has run aground and we are pathetic and afraid and unsure of ourselves (REALITY TV, the SEXUAL OBSESSION WE ALL HAVE WITH grossly overpriced CELL PHONES, ‘CHICK FILET’, OPRAH, and FOX NEWS while our children’s brains rot on violent video games), and our economy (Quantitative easing, Wall Street totalitarianism, de-funding of the EPA while the Earth is being ripped apart by climate change that we ‘just ain’t sure yet’ is actually happening right before our eyes, the cult of finance capitalism), and worst of all, our intellectual capacity (Most Americans cannot name six foreign capitals and the leaders of those six countries). All three sectors, culture, economy, and intellect, have come tumbling down in a heap.
We can get back up anytime we wish to, because we are still Americans. The only question is, do we have the desire, the courage, the heart to get back up on our feet like grown men and women.
READ, Mike. Thaddeus can’t help you; he never had it in him in the first place.
-Professor Rayfield A. Waller
Hit me back anytime
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^ Wow!
(i mean that in a good way, LOL! 🙂 )
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@Legion
Seconded. 🙂
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@Rayfield A. Waller: So then that “thinking” is what is important, not so much how much knowledge you have in your head. You don’t need a large amount of “neutral background knowledge” to evaluate which sources of background knowledge are good sources (as that would suggest you need that schooling that you have criticized).
You mention not to take things just because “people say so” — so I’ll ask: why should I take the authors you recommend?
But I think you’re right: maybe I haven’t read enough “BOOKS”. While I don’t watch much TV or care too much for “popular culture” (what’s a Justin Bieber song? Heck if I know!), I haven’t read a lot of BOOKS, either. I think that’s where the problem is.
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@Rayfield A. Waller:
So what happens if you’re poor like I was/am?
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@Rayfield A. Waller: I noticed in your posts detailing your “anti-essentialist” position you mention how culture can do a whole lot to determine how someone is. However, in the posts it seems you mention the training as occurring in youth. Is there a “Critical Period” for training, and so if I’ve missed that (I’m 24 now), I’m toast?
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^ No, you’re not toast. If you don’t have a strong self concept, now is a good and essential time to form it. Take up his advice to get reading, think on what you read and see where you differ and where you’re in accord with others; it’s like seeing the edges of yourself. Repeating the process will strengthen your self concept, some people will start to dislike you, it’s okay; they see the edges too. (sorry to but in, just thought that might be useful, I’ll say no more)
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@Legion;
Amen, Legion! Butt in some more, because yous aid everything I would have responded to Mike in response this time, so now I don’t have to do anymore long winded explaining. You are right on. The more books you read the less you have to wonder which ones to trust–it’s a cumulative process. You image of ‘seeing the edges of yourself’ is a perfect way to describe the process of learning and growing, what Paulo Friere (author of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”) called, ‘conscienscitization’. You should say more about the reality that people will start to dislike you because as you said, they will start to see the edges of you also. Well expressed. I hope Mike reads your comment closely.
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the first owner of slaves Prior to 1655 there were no legal slaves in the colonies, only indentured servants. All masters were required to free their servants after their time was up. Seven years was the limit that an indentured servant could be held. Upon their release they were granted 50 acres of land. This included any Negro purchased from slave traders. Negros were also granted 50 acres upon their release.
Anthony Johnson was a Negro from modern-day Angola. He was brought to the US to work on a tobacco farm in 1619. In 1622 he was almost killed when Powhatan Indians attacked the farm. 52 out of 57 people on the farm perished in the attack. He married a female black servant while working on the farm.
When Anthony was released he was legally recognized as a “free Negro” and ran a successful farm. In 1651 he held 250 acres and five black indentured servants. In 1654, it was time for Anthony to release John Casor, a black indentured servant. Instead Anthony told Casor he was extending his time. Casor left and became employed by the free white man Robert Parker.
Anthony Johnson sued Robert Parker in the Northampton Court in 1654. In 1655, the court ruled that Anthony Johnson could hold John Casor indefinitely. The court gave judicial sanction for blacks to own slave of their own race. Thus Casor became the first permanent slave and Johnson the first slave owner.
Whites still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves.
By 1699, the number of free blacks prompted fears of a “Negro insurrection.” Virginia Colonial ordered the repatriation of freed blacks back to Africa. Many blacks sold themselves to white masters so they would not have to go to Africa. This was the first effort to gently repatriate free blacks back to Africa. The modern nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia both originated as colonies of repatriated former black slaves.
However, black slave owners continued to thrive in the United States.
By 1830 there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black slaves. By 1860 there were about 3,000 slaves owned by black households in the city of New Orleans alone.
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@Eric….Thats like saying, “Nazis didn’t mistreat all Jews, hell there were Jew servants and Jew accountants and after the war 4,000 of these Jews went on to be successful businessmen because of their time as accountants to Nazi war criminals”. Okay now that you have pointed out 3,775 exceptions how do you feel about the 8 MILLION murdered LEGALLY after this country was actually a country in 1776. What are your thoughts on the RULE and not the exception?
Racist are really good at plucking minute details from white atrocities to MUDDY the waters of EVIL but a good person with a good and moral heart could never see the good in such murderous evil atrocities committed by a country or group of people…It can’t be done to a person of courage, to a person of character or a person of Righteousness…can’t be done!
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Rayfield A. Waller
Sorry I am so late to respond. Thank you. I try.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“OH, Please!! Get real!! This whole so-called “”reparartions”” movement is nothing more than a scam designed to use the primary weapon of Lucifer, guilt, to extort “free money” from someone else.”—Guilt is not the primary source of lucifer as he has been more successful with other tools and it shows in this society. As to your claim of “free” money, that implies that the money was never worked for which is false. The money was worked for in several ways over so it is not free, but earned.
“However, addressing the issue of money, explain this. How was it that some slaves were able to buy their freedom? Obviously, some were able to work and earn wages.”—Actually this could be answered with a google search but since you don’t know how to use one I guess I will explain. Those that earned their freedom did so by working it off. To quote a better source :
“some were freed by their owners to honor a pledge, to grant a reward, or, before the 1700s, to fulfill a servitude agreement. A few were bought by Quakers, Methodists, and religious activists for the sole purpose of freeing them (a practice soon banned in the southern states). Many ran away to free territory, and some of these “fugitives” succeeded in avoiding capture and forced to the South.” http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/emancipation/text1/text1read.htm
“Also, what is to be made of the Black slave owners, some whom were born slaves themselves, bought their freedom (see above) and became plantation owners themselves, owning upwards of over 100 slaves.”—Black slave owners is a common argument rooted in ignorance. Black slave owners consisted of two types. Those buying family members, which would go on the books as slaves, and those that were children of the slave master that he rewarded by providing them with slaves. If you research the Mulatto class was the biggest slave owners.
“Based on the premises of this scam, should all of the very rich Blacks in this country to day be made to hand over all of their wealth, leaving themselves just enough to get by? Those with a personal net worth of $500,000 or more?”—You mean your deluded idea of the premise? But let’s play into your delusion shall we? If that was the case then they would have to pay for the slaves their family had. Simple.
“Well, what about the more than 700,000 lives taken during the War of yankee Aggression? Their lives had value, not to mention what they might have contributed to this American society, plus whatever their children and future descendents could have done? There were many veterans on both the American side and the yankee side that went on to be inventors, innovators, businessmen, doctors, statesmen, and so on. Coca-Cola was invented by a captain of a Georgia cavalry regiment.
So yes!! ABSOTIVELY, POSILUTELY, mark it PAID-IN-FULL!!!”—What about them? Sure their lives were of value but war or not they would have choices. They chose to fight. They would be free to choose. That was not a luxury that slaves had. They did not have a job choice, a choice of home, etc. It matters not what they went on to do or not do in regards to reparations. If they want reparations then go for it on their own merit, but for now deflection is not my interest.
So No! A bunch of men dying because they made the choice to engage in a war is not a paid in full.
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@Eric….You have completely edited the facts to eliminate some of the evil you are so frightened to accept. Here are some of the facts you left out and some facts about other regions of the new world. In fact, the first twenty Black African slaves had arrived from the West Indies in a Dutch vessel and were sold to the governor and a merchant in Jamestown in late August of 1619, as reported by John Rolfe to John Smith back in London. (Robinson, Donald L. Slavery and the Structure of American Politics, 1765 – 1820. NY: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1971) By 1625, ten slaves were listed in the first census of Jamestown. The first public slave auction of 23 individuals was held in Jamestown square in 1638. Black indentured men and the legal definition was all but FICTION as Black men were not allowed BY LAW to stand witness against ANY WHITE ACCUSER and so not one Black man was able to win a single trial case and led to most not even trying. The General Court dispositions that appear after 1640 seem to support this. Barbados was the first British possession to enact restrictive legislation governing slaves in 1644, and other colonial administrations, especially Virginia and Maryland, quickly adopted similar rules modeled on it. Whipping and branding, borrowed from Roman practice via the Iberian-American colonies, appeared early and with vicious audacity.
These Black men and Women you call servants were taken from their homelands, were not given a choice whether to work or not or who they could work for, they were given orders from the court or in some cases the Captain of the ship they arrived in. The God fearing people couldn’t stand being called slave owners given their Christian faith and the Egyptians treatment of Jewish slaves, so they came up with a bullshit solution that would make it look like labor contracts between white land owners and Blacks and they called the Black Slaves indentured servants and gave them their freedom after 25 years or in other words, until they weren’t useful anymore. This made the Faithful feel better about owning slaves but it was all just a veil law to hide slavery pure and simple. So it’s like when America calls genocide, MANIFEST DESTINY, makes the white people feel better about murdering all those Indian children….because in America people can be murdered and tortured as long as you have a good word for it.
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Eric
Do some math or use some common sense? If he was killed in 1622 then how in hell did he fight for a slave in court in 1655?
Secondly you need to quote your source as you are plagiarizing. You copied word for word from documents that are inaccurate. Claiming Johnson was the first slave owner is false as the case of Punch came first.
Did you know that black slaves brought family members? I think not. How about you tell me how many of those black slaves owned by black slave owners were actually family?
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sharina:
Eric wrote: “Anthony Johnson was a Negro from modern-day Angola. He was brought to the US to work on a tobacco farm in 1619. In 1622 he was almost killed when Powhatan Indians attacked the farm. 52 out of 57 people on the farm perished in the attack. He married a female black servant while working on the farm.”
Then you replied: “Do some math or use some common sense? If he was killed in 1622 then how in hell did he fight for a slave in court in 1655?”
Ye mighten follow your own advice, ma’am. He wrote “almost killed” not “was killed”. And without knowing the details of this encounter, that can mean from a very close call and escaping unharmed to almost dying from his wounds.
Pay attention and read closely. You will learn better this way.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Even with my small mistake, I still manage to have more common sense and knowledge on the situation than both of you put together. So ye might want to worry about your self instead of deflecting to a small mistake. 🙂
“Pay attention and read closely. You will learn better this way.”—I wonder why the morons never take their own advice or do they find one mistake ( usually meaningless) and they they are “smart.”
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Unfortunately my comment is in moderation, but it does not take math on my part or common sense. Just that I read more carefully. Desperate for a pot shot I see.
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Aba god why are both my comments in moderation?
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Abagond
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@Everyone:
Regarding this latest irruption of foolish parsing of history regarding Blacks who ‘owned slaves’, although William is doing a good job of responding to this thinly veiled attempt simply to ‘derail’, I have to say that this continual discussion of what role Black victims played in the Western-global slave trade is ultimately an absurd waste of the time and energies of Black descendants of victims, and of any and all progressives. I suspect in fact that this is the chief reason for the existence of this ‘debate’: to change the subject, to harass Blacks and progressives, and to smear Blacks, (as well as often to smear Jews, and Arabs). Most of all it is to change the subject in order to protect the underlying culprit, CAPITALISM, from any real, historical, thoroughgoing critique.
Let’s really think about it: the issue of Blacks ‘owning slaves’ (or more accurately, holding the contracts of indentures) is one that can easily be clarified through an examination of, as William says, “Some of the facts you left out and some facts about other regions of the new world.”
But if we really look critically and analytically at this issue it is nothing more than a red herring: why should we even be concerned with the minuscule issue of which Black victims might have ceremonially participated, even around the indenture system margins in what was irrefutably a structurally Anglo supremacist and economically viral capitalist global industry? An industry in which Blacks, Africans, Arabs, Jews, and even most so-called ‘European whites’ DID NOT participate and did not reap global profit shares from? (Don’t front me on this, ankle biters and signal jammers and trolls out there: to say that Europe benefited from the slave trade is true but more accurately means European CORPORATIONS, KINGS, QUEENS, the POPE and VATICAN, and mercenary tools of those nascent capitalist institutions–not the ordinary European citizens, most of whom were still engaged in surviving the ravages of the dying monarchies, and struggling out of the dark ages and the effects of the Bubonic Plague around the time of the 1600s)
This ‘debate’ Eric is artificially keeping alive sheds great heat and very little light; it is primarily significant only in how it does illuminate an insurmountable problem with Americans and American culture–that the same old discussions, the same myths, the same Anglo-supremacist obsessions keep revolving and repeating over and over again, like ‘with the inevitability of an unloved season’, absorbing energy, and collecting a crowd around the scene of a winter mugging whilst across the street is a hot, stinking summer pit full of corpses no one is paying attention to.
Let me give everyone an example of how pernicious Eric is being (not to mention how he has apparently ignored my own more thorough, more historically detailed earlier post on this subject of Anthony Johnson). He writes:
“Anthony Johnson was a Negro from modern-day Angola. He was brought to the US to work on a tobacco farm in 1619. In 1622 he was almost killed when Powhatan Indians attacked the farm. 52 out of 57 people on the farm perished in the attack. He married a female black servant while working on the farm.”
In addition to the many mis-handlings of fact, missing points and details left elided that plague Eric’s amateur historian discourse there are glaring oddities of that discourse that betray not an objective analysis, but an ideological set of assumptions. For instance, he says that Anthony Johnson was “BROUGHT” from so-called ‘Modern-Day Angola’?? Does that mean the same as to say Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto were ‘BROUGHT” to Auschwitz from Warsaw? In reality, Jews were illegally deprived of their homes and property to be placed in the ghetto then were KIDNAPPED and illegally and inhumanely transported like beasts by rail to Auschwitz.
In reality, Johnson was KIDNAPPED from the area of the Bantu peoples (many Black historians, including me, will often refer to it as ‘The area of Angola’ but it is a bit inelegant if not crass to call it ‘present day Angola’–a common colonialist term–without going into more historical and ethnological detail than that). In more detail, Johnson was STOLEN from the area of the Bantu peoples abutting the African Kingdom of Congo near River Cuanza/Kwanza, with its capital of M’banza Congo not far from where Johnson might have dwelled, whether he was Bantu or full Congolese.
Eric’s very discourse is typical ‘White’ supremacist in that he is repeating the distorted, disrespectfully dehumanizing assumptions of most ‘White’ historians who continually use the discredited and insulting terminology of European colonization, such as ‘present day Angola’. Like ‘present day Texas’, right? Well, in reality, Texas is actually Mexico. That sate was stolen by force from the Mexican citizens who lived there BEFORE ‘present day’. Similarly, ‘the Kingdom of Kuwait’ is actually part of Mesopotamia (Iraq); it is a country no bigger than New Jersey, owned economically by the oil interests that also own Texas. It is currently a ‘country’ literally made up and sculpted by the British and American petroleum interests, with two thirds of the population being not even Kuwaiti but servants, domestics, and workers from other countries. My point just is that there is a difference between making glib statements about the world and the people in it as if they are objects for your whims, and actually thinking about geopolitics. Eric is not ready for prime time historical analysis.
With an acknowledgement to William the Conqueror for having already made most of these point before me, I have to add that Eric’s entire discourse is littered with unsavory phrases, assumptions, revisionism, and bigoted language that betray the fact that he isn’t the least bit interested in clarifying history, just as he isn’t the least bit interested in admitting the basic humanity of Anthony Johnson OR of poor Mr. Casor. To Eric, Mr. Johnson is merely an object, to be used as a device for Eric’s own propaganda, his baiting of those who are posting here in order to discuss the real issue: whether Africans sold themselves into slavery. To my mind, the even deeper issue is whether it even makes SENSE to ask that question using those terms (‘sold’, ‘slavery’, ‘themselves,) without deeply analyzing the historical, economic, and geopolitical meanings of those words.
In a world in which the Holocaust happened, the Atlantic Slave Trade happened, and the Armenian Genocide happened, and the Genocide against the Taino, Arawak, and Caribe island nations of the Caribbean happened, can it ever make sense to have ‘debates’ about whether Jewish KAPOs ‘helped’ the Nazis stuff Jews into ovens, or whether or not Arawak natives ‘helped’ the Spanish conquistadors feed Arawak children to wild dogs, or whether Armenian victims betrayed one another to their murderers?
I would go so far as to say in fact that Eric’s libel, smearing, slander, besmirching, and carping about Black victims of the Atlantic Slave Holocaust is morally corrupt, and more than a little sickening, not just because he is smearing victims but because he does not even have any real conviction behind his words; he is merely speaking to get a rise out of those who are genuinely seeking historical truth. Unless he decides to make a real effort to contribute something less intellectually dishonest and more genuine than libel to this post, I plan to simply ignore Eric.
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@Rayfield….BRAVO SIR, BRAVO…..(bowing)…..and thank you for your very kind mention of my comments.
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Rayfield wrote, “Like ‘present day Texas’, right? Well, in reality, Texas is actually Mexico. That sate was stolen by force from the Mexican citizens who lived there BEFORE ‘present day’”
Oh, BS!!! Mexico itself is a European-based entity, much like you disdain “Angola”. Using your so-called premise, the Aztec, the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and other peoples there way afore this so-called “Mexico” was there should be the holders of what is now present-day Mexico.
And for that matter, Mexico only became independent in 1821 when in 1836, Texas declared its independence. A mere 15 years.
So this itself is a red herring, used to distract from your regressive agenda of extorting money from those who earned it and simply give it to those who have not. And yet, somehow this does not strike you as just plain wrong. Why dont you just give all your money to someone else? Show us how it is done. Be an example of abiding your own words.
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Another thing, Rayfield. “historical truth” is a matter of opinion. Places, dates, events are not. Why they happened is a matter of conjecture, opinion, not truth.
As the saying goes, one man’s terrorist/murderer is another man’s freedom fighter. I call John Brown the former whilst you call him the latter. As well, I call Nat Turner the former, you the latter.
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Rayfield A. Waller
You hit the nail right on the head.
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@Rayfield Waller: Incisive commentary as always.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
I think this should be repeated as it appears that you should take your own advice “Pay attention and read closely. You will learn better this way.”
In his statement to Eric he was pointing out the falsehood and misinformation that he was presenting. If you actually read Eric’s comment it was directed on the topic of this post, which has to do with African’s selling their own.
Your comment is the one that is focusing on reparations and why you feel it should not be given (which is actually off topic). So not only is Mr. Walker’s comment not a red herring as it addresses what he feels is wrong in Eric’s post. It also has nothing to do with reparations. You know what they say. When you assume you make an ass out of U and me. Perhaps if you stop convincing yourself that everyone is focusing on reparations (which is not always money) then you might get farther in your arguments. 🙂
“Another thing, Rayfield. “historical truth” is a matter of opinion. “—Funny how that is what information becomes when it does not support what we want.
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@ Jimminy Shirley;
Ahhhhhh, THANK you Mr. Shirley, for demonstrating exactly what I am saying about all you dogmatic propagandists–and about the unsavory and malefic assumptions you ankle biters and signal jammers all make! It is as if you were all cut from the same cloth. You spilled the beans on yourself, and that self-betrayal is mostly unconscious I think; you are not even aware of it Jimminy (I only call you ‘Jimminy’ as in the cricket who sits upon Pinocchio’s shoulder and who symbolically, as literary historians know, represents the niggling voice of Pinocchio’s own subconscious–he IS Pinocchio. The cricket is visible as a character and is material and manifest simply because Pinocchio is not a ‘real boy’). So anyway, you won’t hear anything I have to say, since you clearly are so wrapped up in your ideologies and your derailing method that you couldn’t even hear what I said that you are pretending to respond to, so enough for you, I will address those I am really talking to…
@EVERYONE;
Do you see how J. Shirley elided most of what I said, Folks, and exposed his OWN agenda?? I didn’t present an argument about ‘reparations’ but he has artificially tried to stick that agenda down my throat.
FAIL.
I am quite articulate and quite practiced at academic (and also street and gutter) debate and nobody gets to stick anything on me or in my mouth, because I AM a ‘real boy’. My nose is not increasing in length as Mr. Shirley’s periodically does. If Shirley had been taking the time to READ my prior posts and the posts of most of you regular commentators here, he would know that I do NOT support what I call ‘punitive reparations’–the obsession of many patriarchal, imperialist, or ‘white’ supremacist’ apologists for the American slave trade, the Atlantic Trade, and segregation, rape, lynching, COINTELPRO assassinations, the abuses against Angela Davis, and against Assata Shakur, the murder of Megar Evers and of Emmett Till, the decades of red lining, blue lining, police brutality, the Tuskegee Experiment, the forced sterilizations of Black women throughout the Seventies (my own mother was a victim of this genocidal practice in on Detroit in the 70’s), and well, I shant go on, you get the PICTURE.
No, I do not support the fig Newton of Mr. Shirley’s imagination and of his night sweats, Folks, as I have clearly posted here in past arguments: I actually support CLASS based reparations, not RACE based reparations, because as I have many times asserted, there is no such thing as ‘race’.
I teach that analysis in my classes at Wayne State University, here in Detroit, and I have published on the subject and lectured on it nationally for many years. Race was invented by the Corporate Atlantic Triangle Slave Trade as a justification (a weak one in the 1500’s when it arose, by the way) for kidnapping millions of African citizens from their own countries, nations, kingdoms, tribes, nation states, towns, cities, confederations, and villages. I am consistent, which as a scholar I am ethically obligated to be: I therefore don’t support ‘white’ governments taxing ‘white’ citizens (not even former slave holding Anglo families in the south) as a punitive act by having them or government ITSELF pay ‘reparations’.
In fact, I support CORPORATE AMERICA being CONSTRAINED by the U.S. Congress and U.S. Justice Department to pay a percentage tax (a ‘surcharge tax’ if you will) to ALL the survivors and descendants of MANY specific abuses.
And ankle biters beware–I am not blowing smoke out of my derriere as you non-reading, no degree having, no history knowing fakers do: I happen to know that one need only read law journals, US International Trade Commission reports (USITC) and US Trade Commission reports (USTF), the history of the Teddy Roosevelt and F.D. Roosevelt administrations’ legislative successes, of the Nixon administration’s quite frequent uses of Executive power to defy the interests of wealth and throttle corporate intransigence, and the decisions, opinions, and proceedings of the past 100 years of Supreme Court arguments, to know that such judicial and legislative constraint of industries. of ruling class powers, and of mega corporations has been a COMMON precedent in this nation.
Descendants of African American, Native American, Asian American, Italian American, Jewish American, Irish American and various other victims of segregation, lynching, dejure racism, dejure sexism, and dejure discrimination based on poverty, powerlessness, and economic oppression and exploitation, all these should be allowed to at least make a claim to reparations, if this were a just nation. In a democracy, such designations of who deserves DIRECT compensation and who deserves simple acknowledgement and tender mercies, such as free college tuition for their children, guaranteed mortgages, wage supports, free college tuition, tax subsidies, and medical warrants (for instance the three generations of victims and descendants of the Love Canal nuclear disaster who continue to suffer horrible birth defects, medical illness, and early deaths certainly deserve some sort of reparation from the criminal nuclear utility corporations that wronged them, wouldn’t you all say?) should be decided by congressional representatives after a truth commission, a combined senate and house fact finding committee, and a citizens’ review council have had a year to investigate, document, and certify who the still-living victims are and who their living descendants are, as well as setting a sliding scale of culpability for corporations to face up to.
For those simple minded folk out there sizing up ankles to bite because they don’t know American history, you poor dears, do let me inform you all that this idea is not whole cloth or made up by me without cause. The idea I am invoking is not only fully precedented, but is fully within the powers of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of American government, and that these powers have been repeatedly stated, announced, invoked, enforced, and carried out, usually with the wealthy and the corporations howling in impotent outrage. Various laws, doctrines, public policy, acts, executive orders, and supreme court decisions have been thus made in the name of The People: just a few examples have been: The Cuban Adjustment Act, The Veterans Access to Care Act, The GI Bill, The entirety of the New Deal legislation and its Welfare acts, The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, the Reparation Stipulations of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Social Security Act, The Act to Regulate Congress and The Interstate Commerce Act, the Transportation Act, the Elkins Act, The Civil Rights Act, The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which granted reparations to Japanese Americans,The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment, the Fairness Doctrine, the dozens of corporate constraint acts and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act clauses that target financial institutions, and literally hundreds more.
Many such acts, doctrines, and legislative, judicial and executive actions have been intended to interdict the wealth and powers of corporations and often to transfer wealth (the wealth we American citizens all made for corporations with our LABOR, don’t forget) back to the American citizens whom these corporations are in fact bound by their own CHARTERS to direct percentages of their share holder profits back to. Just read some original corporate charters, granted by the US government giving corporations their initial right to exist in the first place–it’s mind blowing to see how they have run away from their legal, ethical, and material obligations to pay us back for their use of our public roads, transit systems, public utilities, our wealth base, our labor, and our lives lost in their factories, their smelting houses, their assembly plants, and on their railroads, and such. Those charters command them, as Thomas Jefferson, who feared corporate aristocracy, worked to make sure they would, to exist only temporarily, not in perpetuity, to not pass on wealth to descendants made off citizens’ labor, and to direct profits back to American cities, communities, institutions, and workers! It is no accident that for two decades now corporations have been slyly, snakishly wheedling decisions out of the Supreme Court granting them ‘person-hood’ (the right to relocate overseas) and ‘citizenship rights’ (the right to pass on unprecedented profits to the corporations’ own ‘descendants’). These strategies that we have allowed them to get away with, are transparently designed to distance themselves from the obligations they have to WE the REAL PEOPLE, which many of their government charters stipulate.
Finally, everyone, notice the most self-incriminating foolishness of all in Mr. Shirley’s intellectual dishonesty (or else simple intellectual awkwardness), when he writes, sounding like a video-game playing freshman in his first history class:
” “historical truth” is a matter of opinion. Places, dates, events are not. Why they happened is a matter of conjecture, opinion, not truth.”
We need hardly even bother to raise yet again the same objection we parents often must reiterate to our own venal and youthfully ignorant children: that the logical conclusion of this ‘undergrad’s fallacy’ of utter relativism is that when we do establish the ‘Places, dates, events’ of for instance, the holocaust, that very real political, economic, and ideological TRUTHS very much DO get clarified, as Theodore Adorno, Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, the recently departed South African author Nadine Gordimer, South African playwright Brother Athol Fugard, martyr and novelist survivor of the holocaust, Eli Wiesel, My fellow Michigander and Italian American martyr of the civil rights movement Viola Liuzzo, Goodwin , Chaney, and Schwerner, and the sweet spirited and courageous historian Rosa Luxemburg (murdered by thugs and thrown into a dirty canal because she insisted on seeking deeper truths beneath those ‘places dates and events’, truths that implicated her murderers in their own crimes against humanity). Hitler’s intentions were not anyone’s ‘opinion’ (despite Prime Minister Chamberlain’s very Jimmy L. Shirley-like ‘opinion’ that the threat to Jewish lives and Czech lives, and Polish territory were not to be taken seriously). We don’t, surely don’t, study history simply for the ‘places, dates, and events’.
We have in fact as adults, a moral and ethical responsibility to indeed seek truth in general (the seeking is the point, tell the ankle biters, not the finding) and historical truth is what we are called to seek after most of all, not in the self-interested nihilistic perception that Mr. Shirley himself suffers from and sought to project onto me, but in the sense that our democracy demands of us as an act of brotherhood and sisterhood, of shared national (rather than corporate) interests; the interests of community.
Many historians understand a very bitter truth indeed: that in the absense of shared genetic heritage common to homogeneous societies, modern multi-ethnic societies run the risk of degenerating socially into isolated ethnic and propagandistic tribes lacking empathy for one another’s shared humanity. Without a bond of shared human aspiration, thought, and feeling, atrocity and horror (particularly in a nuclear age!) can and will probably be the result. Mr. Shirley’s petty and carping refusal to DEAL WITH the actual POINTS that Sharina tried to make in her discussion with him, opting to harp instead on the insignificant point that she missed the full phrase ‘ almost killed’ in reference to Mr. Johnson, is disgraceful in that it signals, as his attitude toward me does also, that he didn’t care what she was seeking to say, agree with her or not; the point is that he ‘derailed her’ rather than honestly debating with her.
The issue of reparations for African Americans is in fact a moral obligation of America’s to engage in. We African Americans, as Baldwin argues in his essays, is a struggle for SELF merely as a prelude to the larger struggle, for the rights and humanity of EACH OTHER. I say and always have said, as a son of slavery and oppression, that nowhere else on Earth or in human history has the promise of a place like America arisen as it has here. I call William the Conqueror my ‘brother’ for a very real and crucial reason: his humanity is MY humanity, and I will never have mine if his is denied.The older I get, the more I fear that America’s failures are not so much America’s as they are the failures of we AMERICANS–a failure to take ourselves and each other seriously.
We squat and play with tin soldiers, old grudges, and childish disputes in the sands of a small jetty right beside an enormous, grand sweeping ocean, and seldom look up to take in the wonder of that ocean of possibility that is still our birthright on these shores if we but stand up, brush the sand from ourselves, and walk out to meet the tide of humankind that is still high and ready for us. THAT is what it means to be an adult. Anyone who has raised a child, as I have, will know exactly what I mean. It is not about any one of us, it is about ALL of us, together.
We will survive no other way. Tell the signal jammers and ankle biters I said so, and love to everyone, even to Pinocchio. May he become a real boy someday.
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I have a question about the following statement from Rayfield A. Waller that I would like to know if other commenters would like to weigh in on.
I can agree with the point that we run the risk of our society “degenerating socially into isolated ethnic and propagandistic tribes lacking empathy for one another’s shared humanity”. But I cannot fully accept that it is due to an absence of shared genetic heritage. I think it is more due to an absence of shared personal, family and community narratives.
The slave born to a white plantation owner and a black slave mother shared at least 50% of the same ancestors as the owner’s white children. But their personal narrative, and the one passing on down to their descendants would be very different.
I envision a black American (say, 16% European, 3% Native American, 2% Asian, 79% African) and a white American (89% European, 4% African, 4% Native American, 3% Asian) sharing a large number of common ancestors and thus DNA, but a very different set of historical family and legacy narratives that give us a very different perception of what we are and what we identify with. Imagine if they both traced their closest common ancestor to a mid 19th century Chinese railroad worker or Native American. I suspect that if we had a way to check it, we would find that Americans share a larger portion of our genetic heritage with each other than we care to acknowledge, esp. if we can trace any of our ancestry in the USA earlier on (say, before the civil war).
For an example that doesn’t have to be traced far back at all, President Obama’s kids are being raised as African-American and his sister Maya’s kids are being raised as Asian-American, but those 2 sets of first cousins share the same white grandmother from Kansas. If we trace ourselves back to the 19th century, I bet we all share a large portion of genetic heritage that we have chosen (even unwittingly) not to acknowledge. Our “non-homogeneous” society is a lot more interconnected than we realize.
This has been a humbling and enlightening experience for me, something that helped me deal with the psychological problems in my 10s and 20s – that our shared humanity is not just about sharing similar aspects of historical oppression (e.g., the coolie trade system v. the slavery trade system), but genetic heritage as well.
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@Jimmy Shirley….
“Oh, BS!!! Mexico itself is a European-based entity, much like you disdain “Angola”. Using your so-called premise, the Aztec, the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and other peoples there way afore this so-called “Mexico” was there should be the holders of what is now present-day Mexico.”
This is a very weak attempt to one up a man whose intelligence, humanity and grace is millenia beyond your pay grade. First of all the Aztec empire ended in the 1500’s, a mere 300 years before independence and not the WAY AFORE you mention. Second of all Mexico was not settled by Europeans nor is it a European entity, Europeans came to central America and Mexico and did rule for a short time but had little to do with present day Mexico or Mexican independence. Mexico was settled by people from South Central America and people from the North who would better identify with Native Americans. Thirdly you say that Aztecs and Toltecs and Olmecs should be the holders of Mexico….THEY ARE, however today they are known as Mexican citizens. Mexico is no more a European entity than Hong Kong is a British entity. You would have looked much better if you just would have excepted defeat but you had to come back for another beating….my condolences sir.
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@Jimmy Shirley……Historical Truth?…You mean as in the BIBLE? Or historical ambiguity as seen through the eyes of the well choreographed white history books, edited to make children see a very different America. An America full of white heroes and wild savage indians hell bent on wiping out the white race. Or a very brief lesson on slavery and the focus, not on the atrocity of slavery and African families, but the heroic duty of a white president in a tall hat to put an end to it. Or do you mean the Historical truth which exposes that Lincoln was a racist and that the war was more about reigning in the Southern states and the economic implications of a country who refuses to leave slavery behind as the rest of the civilized world had already done. So Historical truth is more of an EYE OPENER in many cases and historical fact is also open to interpretation because many times the ones writing it are also the ones creating their twisted version of it…..
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@ Jefe:
To clarify,
Historians don’t necessarily use the phrase ‘genetic ancestry’, ‘shared genetics’, or ‘genetic’ in the same way that biologists do. ‘Genetic’ literally defined, is “of or relating to origin, or issuing from some common origin.”. I was making a point, fairly common in sociological analysis, about HOMOGENEITY vs HETEROGENEITY (notice the root, ‘gen’ in both words, harking back to English roots in Latin and Greek stems, ‘gen, genos, gena’, etc–check your Oxford English Dictionary; words like gender, generation, gentle, engender, etc., come from a cognate of Latin and Greek, German and other Romance languages).
Jefe, you sort of turned my use of one word into a locked in linear rail that you rode off into a realm far from what I meant.
SOCIOLOGISTS since Durkheim have theorized (and the history of the 19th and 20th centuries do provide some evidence to support the theory!) that heterogeneous societies (America is a heterogeneous society) tend toward entropy more certainly than do homogeneous societies (homogeneity supposes common RELIGIOUS, CULTURAL, LANGUAGE, and ETHNIC origination–Japan (Nippon) during WWII for instance. Societies such as are championed in basic America theories of CIVIC DEMOCRACY in the wake of accumulation and immigration run the risk of falling apart, Remember in high school when your history/government teacher cited the well known maxim, ‘Democracy contains the seeds of it’s own destruction’? It is also said of civic democracy (I’m not talking here about representative democracy, but CIVIC democracy) that it consists of two sheep and a wolf trying to decide what to eat for dinner.
Even the so-called ‘ideal’ democracy of ancient Athens was put into peril by the Persian invasions partly because the Greek city states were not completely homogeneous–they were geographically of the same origin, but NOT genetically identical (‘genetically’, meaning of the same PLACE, which they were not, since the various states were ideologically and to some extent ethnically distinct from one another). Many were either democratic, leaning towards democracy, or tinged by the effects of Athenian democracy and commerce, but they were only loosely held together under the Delian League, founded in 478 BC, establishing a coalition of 150 or so Hellenic region Greek city states as an alliance to fight the Persians under Athens’ leadership. My own high school history teacher remarked of this alliance: “Athens, in horror over the threat of the destruction of all of Greece, found herself herding obnoxious cats”.
Again, reality, thinking, even language are not absolute or single-tracked. It isn’t black and white or ‘us’ and ‘them’ as if heterogeneity is a ticket to go at each other with pikes until none of us are left to fight. And in any event, it takes effort, work, study. research, and open debate in good faith to seek historical truth, an activity, said John Adams, that can and must sustain a democracy that learns from it’s history.
Some things to remember, all of which come from our heritage as Americans, these things all having been said by our greatest thinkers, Lincoln, Sontag, Baldwin, Jefferson, FDR, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Clarence Darrow, Toni Morrison, Hemingway, etc:
-Historical truth is not a thing or a destination, it is the act of SEEKING the truth we see in the acts that have been committed in the past.
-Justice under our system is not the verdict in a trial that finds someone ‘guilty’, it is the trial itself, regardless of the verdict. The trial IS ‘justice’.
-Language is not a literal sign system with literal equivalent meanings, it is instead a dense network of often opposing meaning, reference, and roots.
-Nothing is sacred, no one’s ethnicity, history, or identity is of any meaning whatsoever in isolation, because we are one planet where the fertility of a plot of land in 12th century Dorchester and a blight on crops there can influence the birthrate of 14th century Malian village women two hundred years later and a half world away.
-The human race is an ‘ecosystem’ of intertwined interests. So nothing is ‘sacred’ other than the irreducible (unalienable’) value of each human being we share the planet with and who will inevitably influence our own quality of life through the level of well being or lack of well being each human enjoys or suffers (we need to be very alarmed at the suffering in Palestine right now because that suffering will eventually effect US).
-Debate is not argument, one-upsmanship, battle, or zero-sum gaming; it is the crucible of cross assertions that enact and forge the dialectic: thesis and antithesis coming into conflict leading to a synthesis that becomes a new thesis, and then the process starts over again with a new awareness greater than the sum total of the debate’s various assertions.
Just to clarify.
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WTC,
You said, “Second of all Mexico was not settled by Europeans nor is it a European entity”
My references will be from Wikipedia, and yes I know all about Wiki. But by checking any other website, you will find the same information, though mayhaps worded differently.
The capture of Tenochtitlan marked the beginning of a 300-year-long colonial period, during which Mexico was known as “New Spain”. (A quick check on any modern day, as well as ancient maps, will show Spain is a European country.)
Then you said, “Europeans came to central America and Mexico and did rule for a short time but had little to do with present day Mexico or Mexican independence. ”
So you contradicted yourself in the same sentence. Not a bad catch from a supposed intellectual inferior, eh?
But your second assertion is so incorrect as to be laughable and I am embarrassed for you. My own condolences, sir.
From Wikipedia: On September 16, 1810, a “loyalist revolt” against the ruling Junta was declared by priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, in the small town of Dolores, Guanajuato. The first insurgent group was formed by Hidalgo, the Spanish viceregal army captain Ignacio Allende, the militia captain Juan Aldama and “La Corregidora” Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez. Hidalgo and some of his soldiers were captured and executed by firing squad in Chihuahua, on July 31, 1811. Following his death, the leadership was assumed by priest José María Morelos, who occupied key southern cities.
In 1813 the Congress of Chilpancingo was convened and, on November 6, signed the “Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America”. Morelos was captured and executed on December 22, 1815.
In subsequent years, the insurgency was near collapse, but in 1820 Viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca sent an army under the criollo general Agustín de Iturbide against the troops of Vicente Guerrero. Instead, Iturbide approached Guerrero to join forces, and on August 24, 1821 representatives of the Spanish Crown and Iturbide signed the “Treaty of Córdoba” and the “Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire”, which recognized the independence of Mexico under the terms of the “Plan of Iguala”.
Almost everyone of these people were of strict Spanish descent. Not all, but most. So Mr. WTC, at least check your facts afore you write thus revealing your ignorance. Truth is NOT what you make it to be, but what it be.
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Mr. Waller,
I shaunt ingage in name calling, as it is beneath me, but apparently not you.
I will jump around a bit, so please try and keep up.
You accuse me of pettiness in attempting to derail Sharina, and not debate what she was saying.
The fact is, by overlooking a very salient point, IMHO, is granting agreement with a falsehood. And by even making her claim, she went on to raise a false point of how could he be alive years later, which was her whole point. Thus her point was invalidated because it began on a false premise. And this should not be pointed out? How droll!
Then you mention all those law and reports, all those various acts as though you read them all. I find that somehow very hard to believe, bordering on the incredulous.
You said, “the logical conclusion of this ‘undergrad’s fallacy’ of utter relativism is that when we do establish the ‘Places, dates, events’ of for instance, the holocaust, that very real political, economic, and ideological TRUTHS very much DO get clarified”
In your words, FAIL! You WOULD be correct to call them “historical opinions”. Because TRUTH is universal, can not be denied, is unassailable. Math is unassailable as 2 + 2 = 4. So too is history. But what you offer is interpretation according to your own agenda. So a capitalist would see the communist revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries and interpret it one way. The communist would see them and interpret them in a whole different way. The capitalist would see the history of the western hemisphere since 1500 and interpret it one way. The communist another way entirely.
Are they both right? Are they both wrong? Is the one right, the other wrong? Is there some right and wrong in them both? Whichever, who is there to determine which is right and wrong? You? Me? Obviously we can not come to an agreement.
Then you said, “We have in fact as adults, a moral and ethical responsibility to indeed seek truth in general (the seeking is the point, tell the ankle biters, not the finding) and historical truth is what we are called to seek after most of all, not in the self-interested nihilistic perception that Mr. Shirley himself suffers from and sought to project onto me, but in the sense that our democracy demands of us as an act of brotherhood and sisterhood, of shared national (rather than corporate) interests; the interests of community.”
First of all, you dont know me. Nihilistic? ni·hil·is·tic
ˌnīəˈlistik,ˌnēə-/
adjective
adjective: nihilistic
rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless.
I assure you sir that is not me. And as I stated right from the start, I will not ingage in name calling, as it is beneath me.
Now, you mention brotherhood, sisterhood, community. Really?!! Somehow, I am getting the sense, and not just from here but from all over, that this excludes us White, unreconstructed Southerners. Now you will say this betrays who I am to some extant and what my agenda is. So what? So have you. I will say this for the record. I believe the Southern States were right in their quest for self determination as was so eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Precisely why the C.S.A. was established.
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@Jimmy Shirley….”I shaunt ingage in name calling, as it is beneath me, but apparently not you.”
Engage is spelled with an “E” not an “I” and shaunt is not a word, if you meant “Shan’t” then the quoted version is how you spell it.
“…at least check your facts afore you write thus revealing your ignorance.”
What did you say was beneath you? Was it name calling?
You have again revealed your petty need to SQUEEZE any minuet detail out of a multitude of comments to try to make yourself appear correct but as Mr. Rayfeild said, you are not actually reading these post because if you were you would, I hope, understand them better before you place the proverbial foot in YE proverbial mouth.
The definition of ‘Settle’ is: To place in a fixed or permanent condition; to make firm, steady, or stable; to establish; to fix; esp., to establish in life; to fix in business, in a home, or the like.
This next information is borrowed from the history channels website, “A History of Mexico”;
1500 B.C….The first major Mesoamerican civilization–the Olmecs–grows out of the early villages, beginning in the southern region of what is now Mexico. This period is marked by the effective cultivation of crops such as corn (maize), beans, chile peppers and cotton; the emergence of pottery, fine art and graphic symbols used to record Olmec history, society and culture; and the establishment of larger cities such as San Lorenzo (about 1200-900 B.C.) and La Venta (about 900-400 B.C.).
So you see my comments were apt and correct in their broad context. I said that Europeans did not settle Mexico and they surely did not. I said they did come to Mexico and ruled for a short time, “300 years” is a short time given Mexicos 3,500 plus year history. So in what delusional world did I contradict myself? Have you forgot to take your meds? So the Europeans ruled Mexico for a mere 10% of Mexicos history and you seem to think that this makes Mexico a European entity. So you would believe that a country steeped in 10% of a regions rule is the sole proprietor of it’s existence? That is again a WEAK attempt at trying to circumvent the truth in hopes to gain back some of your self respect. I surely hope it worked because most people will be embarrassed for you and your copy and paste attempts at debating….as you would tell yourself…FAIL.
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@Rayfield A. Waller,
Maybe it would help if you defined some of your words sometimes if they are a “historian” definition vs. what might otherwise be viewed as a layman’s definition.
It is not my fault if some of what you wrote is misunderstood, and caused what you perceived to be a derailment from your meaning, but thanks for clarifying.
But, you also detracted from the point I made about the calming and humbling effect it had for me personally, to learn as a teenager that our so-called heterogeneous society is not the result of a discrete genetic inheritance. It helped mitigate some of my adolescent turmoil.
BTW, even societies like Japan are not 100% homogeneous. They like to see themselves that way, but they are not.
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@ Everyone;
Those who have nothing to actually SAY about politics, economics, technology, culture, public policy, world events, biography, or history will inevitably expose their own paucity of thought by acting like moles–picking away at the details and the connotation and denotation of the words said by those who really do have something analytical to say.They’re the kind of folks who hear Lincoln’s words in the Gettysburg Address, “Our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty…” and say, “What?? ‘Conceived’ implies human reproduction–Wikipedia says so! Was Lincoln trying to say our nation is the result of sexual discourse? Shame on him!”
FAIL.
Less than 30% of human history, knowledge, and information are on the internet–sorry, but as I tell my students all the time: if you don’t read books, use books, own books, and respect books you will be unable to truly think about complex issues and ideas. (I make them do library research–no internet sources; oh, how they howl and wail to have to go read books). Cutting and pasting, reading summaries on the internet, and being a mole (burrowing into isolated data points and undermining other’s complicated analyses by chewing away at petty details) is not to present a valid argument or analysis of one’s own. The internet is a tool, not the focus of the discipline required to think. Moles betray what they are by never having anything to really argue that is complex or related to politics, history, economics, technology, biography, or that can even draw upon simple quotes (epigrammatically presented for thematic meaning) from intellectuals. (moles don’t like the word, ‘intellectual’). Instead they respond, squawk, complain, react, and dig into the analyses of those who do have valid arguments
I won’t offer these moles what they often demand– a list of definitions at the end of my post so they won’t have to do the work of looking up the words they clearly don’t understand, but I will do this for them: listen, moles, ALL arguments and analyses can only seek validity–none are perfect nor should they be. It is in the process of debate and of discussion of an argument in a public forum such as this that an argument can and sometimes will progress from validity to soundness. To say an argument is not just valid but is SOUND is the result of the crucible of discussion, consideration, and debate in good faith.
Moles do not argue in good faith, they simply chew away at the data points of those they oppose, which contributes nothing to actual debate, To use a different metaphor they are like lousy boxers who don’t depend on the training of footwork, the counter-punch. the bob and weave, strategy, tactics, and the years of diet management, roadwork, progressive resistance training, and sparring it takes to be a good boxer. Instead they simply smear pepper or grease on their gloves and rub it into the eyes of their opponents and try to hide it from the ref. Even Chuck Wepner, ‘The Bayonne Bleeder’, worst boxer who ever leaned on the corner posts, was at least a real boxer–he didn’t try to win by distracting, blinding, or rabbit punching his opponents.
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@Rayfield…Professor, this was a very delightful explanation…wonderful sir.
“Moles do not argue in good faith, they simply chew away at the data points of those they oppose, which contributes nothing to actual debate. To use a different metaphor they are like lousy boxers who don’t depend on the training of footwork, the counter-punch. the bob and weave, strategy, tactics, and the years of diet management, roadwork, progressive resistance training, and sparring it takes to be a good boxer. Instead they simply smear pepper or grease on their gloves and rub it into the eyes of their opponents and try to hide it from the ref. Even Chuck Wepner, ‘The Bayonne Bleeder’, worst boxer who ever leaned on the corner posts, was at least a real boxer–he didn’t try to win by distracting, blinding, or rabbit punching his opponents.”
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“You accuse me of pettiness in attempting to derail Sharina, and not debate what she was saying.”—Actually that is not an accusation as it is a proven fact. I have a whole post above answering and engaging all the points you brought up, but instead you chose to focus on something in a post not directed towards you. You abandoned and deflect on to point out me missing “almost” in Eric’s post.
“The fact is, by overlooking a very salient point, IMHO, is granting agreement with a falsehood. And by even making her claim, she went on to raise a false point of how could he be alive years later, which was her whole point”—It is not a very important point. You are just trying to make it one. I gather it is a new point for you to argue as you failed to argue your own. Also it actually was not my whole point. I brought up a few different points. A that he was plagiarizing and B that there was a case that proceeded what he was quoting. I could add more to debunk his idea that Anthony Johnson was the first to own slaves, but William actually went into detail and so I am not required to repeat.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Also I just noticed that you are trying to argue that my premise or point as you put it is false. Here is a repeat of the quote in question.
“Do some math or use some common sense? If he was killed in 1622 then how in hell did he fight for a slave in court in 1655?”
This is more a snide remark instead of an actually premise or point. It actually was not meant to make any point, but since you want to attempt to argue such things as red herring and false premise then I offer this source so you can learn when to better point it out.
https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/FaultyLogic.html
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Rayfield A. Waller
I wouldn’t call Jefe and mole. He is actually just very thorough in the information he gathers. I think you too may have just gotten off on the wrong foot.
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correction two
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a not and. Excuse my typos.
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@Sharina;
Actually, Sharina, I think you are correct–re-reading Jefe, he seems to be making concessions and actually speaking in good faith about his own experiences. Unfortunately my post comes right after his and seems to be a response to him, which I didn’t mean it to be. I was addressing everyone, not him, but he did ask for a definition in his post and then mine right after his disdains definitions–it sounds as if I was talking to him. I guess I owe him an apology.
Your sense of fairness is appreciated.
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@Jefe
I read your post closely and I think I didn’t respect what you were trying to express as much as I should have, Jefe, and I apologize. I will read you more closely from now on and try to focus on the spirit of what you seek to express.
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“So you would believe that a country steeped in 10% of a regions rule is the sole proprietor of it’s existence? That is again a WEAK attempt at trying to circumvent the truth in hopes to gain back some of your self respect. I surely hope it worked because most people will be embarrassed for you and your copy and paste attempts at debating….as you would tell yourself…FAIL.”
Sheesh!!!
This same standard can be used on this side of North America. And by the way, it is the word “Mexico” just like the word “Angola” which is in question. Mexico as the name of a country DID NOT EXIST afore the Europeans came and conquered the peoples there.
This is not rocket surgery!!
FAILED!!
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@Jimmy Shirley…..If this was a Monarchy and you the King then yes you would be able to control the outcomes of each debate and judge your own success but due to the fact it is a forum, judging your own comments on their aptness just makes you look small and desperate….move on.
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William The Conqueror
The only thing I have manage to see him do is duck and dodge and then focus on minuscule points. What magnitude does the name “Mexico” and “Angola” have to do with the main point? I thought the point was how Texas was acquired from Mexico (although other valid points were made as well). As can be seen here : https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/#comment-246420
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Sharina
I agree, plus he only responds to the one sentence he has a snowballs chance to twist into something he can claim victory with, so petty. I get upset at myself for getting pulled in by his attempt to attack my self imposed insecurities, something I felt comfortable exposing to the good people in the room but have left myself open to influenza from the “Virus’s” that show up….LOL.
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@ William the C:
Did he really say ‘rocket surgery”? Rockets with cancer, maybe? Sorry, I just had to ask.
If Mexico is proven to not have existed does that mean ANYTHING?? To the point, does it mean that Africans ‘sold their own people as slaves’? These rockets he talks of have blown us from ourselves, to paraphrase Benvolio in “Hamlet”.
Hey, I could easily argue that “Africa” was not the name applied to the entire continent we are speaking of until the obnoxious Roman empire seized the Kushite/Kmetish (Egyptian) word, ‘Afruika’ meaning ‘turning to the Ka’ and also meaning ‘motherland’ and turned this word into a literal trophy by re-naming the conquering Roman general Scipio (the elder Scipio), dubbing him ‘Scipio Africanus’, the man who defeated Hannibal at Zama, now called Tunisia.
Egad, folks! This whole frickin’ frackin’ Earth has been renamed at some time or other by conquerors. Hardly any of the place names are original, so the sensitive thing to do is just to TRY to learn the histories of the places we yammer about and maybe even the places where we LIVE. Here in Michigan where I live, the word ‘Michigan’ is a bastardized, distorted version of the murdered Chippewa Indian word, ‘meicigama’ (meh-ee-chee-gama). Back when I was a kid in elementary school. like alot of other cities in America back then, the Detroit public school children were still required to learn the hunting songs of these murdered natives, and contradictorily, also made to sing a strange, misanthropic song I can still remember about conquest over the “godless heathen Browns” of “Michee-gama”:
“Godless heathen Browns,
brought to God’s grace,
Oh, we subdued their fierce blood
to civilize their race,
to make Micheegama our own,
to make Micheegama our own,
and make it God’s home…”
They were actually teaching us that!
William, you probably already know about this, but everybody: look at a map of the United States. You looking at it? Ready? Now blow your own mind by realizing that about HALF the states are named after or are distortions of murdered, genocided, or conquered native nations, tribes, confederations, city states, schools, outhouses, and settlements! (Arizona–‘Ahrizonac’, Utah–‘Uhteh’, Michigan–‘Mshigem’, Alaska–‘Alaxsxix’, and on and on–look ’em up!)
That’s been the point of all my teaching as a university historian: EVERYBODY has an ethnic heritage, everybody is ‘Colored’, even Conan O’Brien, and everybody has suffered displacement, oppression, conquest, and loss of self (especially Irish descended Conan O’Brien!). We all have enough in common to reach an accord, organize, work together, and mobilize to kill and eat the rich.
Ooops. Did I say that last part about the rich out loud?
(LOL)…now can we get back to the point of this string?
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William The Conqueror
I see nothing wrong with making mistakes and having flaws and being able to acknowledge that. It is a humbling quality and nothing to be taken for granted or viewed as a flaw, IMO.
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@Everybody….you guys are great but then again most intelligent people have good souls, thank you. I have to tell you that by coming here and debating, reading, listening, researching…I have learned so much and my responses and my vocabulary has expanded and I feel better about fitting in, I am grateful for the time here and the cyber friends I have made….I wish I could spend a few hours everyday, it sure would be fun and enlightening.
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@Rayfield, I often thought about why so many cities and states had Hispanic and Indian names growing up and as I learned about U.S. history I then thought I understood but then again I am never surprised at how violent and racist this country can be or has been.
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@ William C.:
Yeah, Brother, our country and our culture are like a grave for Dead natives. All of us had a moment, from childhood usually, when we were awakened to this overwhelming reality of crimes in history. I think in his way Jefe was trying to articulate this experience, and I wasn’t listening to him closely enough. Even as a Black boy in Detroit in the midst of the effects of the Black Power movement when all my adult relatives had thoroughly schooled me in the history of slavery and of my people, I was flabbergasted one day when I started reading the book, “The Odessa File” and discovered something they hadn’t taught us in school: this HUGE CRIME against Jewish people of Europe–the holocaust. I couldn’t believe at first that Europeans had done this TO EUROPEANS, and the SCALE of it! It changed me, it made me start to dig into history, not just Black history, and made me seek a way to put everyone I knew into perspective (my favorite teachers were Anglos, my best friend was Filipino–he’s still my best friend, my little kiddie girlfriend was Irish, and even in my family, my grandfather’s closest friends at work were Italian, and my mother had Caribbean friends)
If we all pause to put the issue of Native genocide into perspective (and I mean BLACK people too, who need to reflect on this as all other Americans ought to) it becomes much more clear why sports teams that resist changing their names are amazingly pernicious. Imagine being Native American, of the Original Peoples, and seeing every day, all your life, right in your face the record of genocide against you. You aren’t asking for the land back that still has your name on it (so who can doubt it’s your land, right?). All you want is for sports teams to stop minstrelizing you, mocking you, making you into a cartoon–just a little respect, and America will not even take that small request seriously?
One of my heroes, Marlon Brando, was an activist as well as an actor, and it’s little known that he took off years from his acting career to fund, support, and march with the civil rights movement. He focused a great deal specifically on the genocide against Natives. Back in the 70’s when I was a child, he appeared on the Dick Cavette Show talking about the issue of our ignorance about Natives–it was an interview done right after he asked a friend, a Native American woman, Ms. Sasheen Littlefeather to turn down his 1973 Oscar for him.. Below also it the speech by Littlefeather (notice the mixture of obnoxious boos and of applause–is the glass half empty or half full? I like to think it was perhaps half full).
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0RAQVj9sNM)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QUacU0I4yU)
See why I love history and why I’m a history professor?
Shalom and Salaam, my Brother William.
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Rayfield….
Thank you sir, I have never seen the Dick Cavette interview with Mr. Brando and I am so thankful that you shared it with me, I knew nothing of this mans advocacy for the oppressed. I now see him through different eyes and want to learn more about him.
I am sure I have seen the John Wayne acceptance speech, likely as a child. Growing up I was a huge John Wayne fan and i guess I still am. In my 20’s my ex and I used to watch all of his movies that I have on VHS. I had every western he made, post his early black and white film work. We both even read his youngest daughters biography about her time with him; we both cried at the end of the book. My opinion of him has been tarnished through the years as I learn more and more about him and his rather crass or supremacist attitude towards people of color. I am almost sure he was a racist. His daughter wrote a bit about his bigotry in her book but very little. She said she was bothered by his callousness towards Blacks and Hispanics but went on to say he is just set in his ways or something to that effect. I However I still get emotional when I watched his award acceptance, probably because it reminded me of my youth. I feel guilty if I still find someone who I know is racist to be likable or that I still have regards for; entertainers, friends, etc…
Thank you my friend and Shalom….
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@Rayfield A. Waller
I know it is not meant for me, but thanks for the videos.
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@Rayfield A. Walker:
First, I’d like to say thanks for the stuff you told me earlier on this thread. I’ve already started reading the first book you mentioned.
I’m curious, though, about what you said here:
In another post, you mention America is a “heterogeneous” society. So that would suggest it runs that risk too — but what then would it take to avoid that, and make America into a just and healthy country?
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@Rayfield A. Waller: AGH! That should be WALLER, not Walker, sorry 🙂 I get that confused with “Walker” a lot!
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@Sharina;
It’s meant for everyone, you especially.
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@William the C;
Everyone is only human.From what I’ve read, ‘The Duke’ (one of my father’s and mother’s favorite actors when I was a child) was not quite as much a racist as many in Hollywood. He seems to have been more ignorant that he was malicious. Anyway, he had a lot of Black fans in the 60’s and 70’s–related to personal changes they say he went through toward the end of his life. My father used to claim he changed his attitude toward Blacks and natives after he got lung cancer. I remember he even did some public service announcements for racial justice. But who knows? All of Hollywood tried to lean toward racial justice when it became widely expected. Wayne was an actor, and a symbol of a part of American history that was unjust. As a human being we don’t know what was in his heart of hearts by the time he died. I always did and still do love his film, “Rio Bravo”. What should we do, judge all of our artists, singers, musicians, etc. from the past by how enlightened they were in their attitudes toward Blacks, natives, women? How about their attitudes toward gays? A lot of us would have to be shamed by our heroes if we did a litmus test on everybody–a lot of us would have to be shamed by our own families! (LOL). I think Brando was born at the right time, and was free to be progressive in ways Wayne never could have been.
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@mike4ty4;
In the old days, in high school social studies they used to teach us about societies that exist for ages without significant immigration or incorporation of new nationalities into the population and without significant development of diversity between regions, religious traditions or languages. Common values, language, and folk cultural roots make such societies to some degree ‘homogeneous’. Be contrast ‘heterogeneous’ societies experience combinations of significant immigrant assimilation, significant rise in regional or religious or language differences, or significant isolation of sub groups and sub populations one from the other. America is by design one of the most radically heterogeneous societies in Western history. That is where the concept of the American ‘melting pot’ comes from: the so-called ‘melting’ of many different languages, religions, traditions, ethnicities, nationalities, and creeds into one ‘harmonious’ population held together by devotion to the constitution, to the pledge of allegiance, to our democratic system, and to our capitalist economic system. Beginning in the late 1800’s, laws and state constitutional amendments began to get passed to make public education compulsory and to fund the building of schools to inculcate (program into) America’s population a common sense of national identity as well as basic literacy.
By the early 1900’s, with the beginning of the largest wave of immigration into America in its history (millions of Europeans by the mid century, the majority entering through New York City) the need for public education was so great in order to teach new American citizens to speak and write English and make their children forget their native German, Italian, Polish, Yiddish, Latvian, etc., that a drive to spread public education swept two generations of American children off the streets, out of the factories, and into mandatory public schools. Immigrant children were no longer being used as slaves in the workforce due to the Keating-Owen Act and later the Fair Labor Standards Act outlawing child labor in sweat shops, canneries, textile mills,slaughterhouses, and factories. They were sent to school in order to preserve the heterogeneity of American society.
Of course, the idea of the ‘melting pot’ has always been an illusion–a myth. One reason Anglo Americans are half crazy with bigotry, paranoia, and fear is because they were abused in the early 20th century by the ‘melting pot’ ideology: they were convinced to dislike their grandparents’ languages, foods, and ‘dark natures’ from the ‘shtetl’ and from the bogs and the vinyards and the potato farms, and to adopt an ethnically dead, false identity: ‘Caucasian’. For the first generation of ‘caucasians’ who came out of the city tenements and assimilated into the American institutions that assimilation meant life without packzis, latkes, gefilte fish, capicola, haggis, blintzes, baba ganoush, Cossack stew, and all the other so-called ‘white’ European ethnic foods; that was the point of the ‘melting pot’ which took away from Ethnic Europeans their ethnic heritage and gave them a stiff-butt, tight lipped, arrogant ‘majority’ status and ‘white identity. Ethnic foods were not just food but were symbolic (the REAL foods are still found in ethnic European restaurants hidden deep inside urban America and inside ethnic markets, not the phony ones in cans and in jars on market shelves and in bullshit New York and San Francisco ‘fusion’ restaurants where the original ethnic funk has been lost and the food is just another minstrelized commodity for tourists and suburbanites down in the city for ‘an experience’ with the distorted versions of their own great grandparents’ foods.)
Rather than a ‘melting pot’ America might be more like a QUILT or like a SALAD BOWL, say Native Americans, Blacks, and Latinos. who have always been victimized by the assimilation regime we inherited of public education meant to make us conform and forget our parents. The regime had early in the 20th century subtly brutalized, brainwashed, and whitewashed Italians, Jews, Irish, and Polish citizens. By the late 20th century, whole generations of Blacks, Latinos and Natives were in open rebellion against the brainwashing toward ‘assimilation’ (adopting a false ‘white’ identity and false ‘white’ ethnicity that was really just a denial of all ethnicity. Because of this rebellion against false homogeneity “multiculturalism” arose as an answer to assimilation, as a way for us to fight back.
The so-called ‘cultural wars’ of the 90’s over multiculturalism freed a lot of Blacks, women, Latinos, and Natives to force our way into the American institutions, the educational system and into law schools and medical schools that had been blocked from us; we knew in fact that even if we subkitted to assimilation we would still be kept out and segregated. For us, the social contract didn’t work: in return for assimilation and for pressing our hair, pinching our noses, and talking like we were ‘white’ all we got was a chance to be janitors, fast food managers, low pay public school teachers, and insurance salespeople. Athletics entertainment industry jobs were the only other alternative–dancing, tossing footballs, and singing, same as always). Through multiculturalis, we presented a new model: We could be Black, Latin, female, and Native, and funky, and nappy headed as hell, and STILL participate as equals in American society. I was one of those Americans of color fighting against assimilation, segregation, and the oppressive ideologies of ‘white’ supremacy; I attended Cornell University in the 90’s for my graduate degree studies where ‘multiculturalism’ was changing the traditionally ‘white’ male, heterosexual, elitism of that ivy league institution.
It so happens, by the way, that the ‘multicultural’ movements of the 90’s were the result of the far more confrontational even violent movements of the 60’s and 70’s when pure rage was pouring out of oppressed generations of colored people and women–such as the Black Power struggle, The gay rights movement that grew out of the violent Stonewall riots, the radical feminist movement that put thousands of women in the streets burning their bras, their aprons, their wedding dresses, and sometimes burning down buildings, the American Indian Movement, Chicano revolution and La Raza, and even the rise of the New Jewish Agenda and Whites who rejected false ‘whiteness’ such as the ‘White Panther Party’ and the ‘Weather Men’, who freaking blew up federal buildings in order to denounce racism against Blacks!
Multiculturalism is simply the principle that the melting pot which used to work by denying European Whites their ethnic identities so that they would assimilate, is now even more deadly, denying Colored people and women their very right to exist, to work, to participate in the electoral system, even to vote, to belong to the professions. You know what? All my career as a professor in several states I have many times been stopped by campus security on university campuses where I’ve worked and they question me and challenge me as I key into my own damn office! I had a doctor once, a Black woman, who was arrested by Miami police as she was getting into her own car–they accused her of trying to steal it. I have a friend, a Latino who is a lawyer, who had to start wearing expensive black suits every day, even on Saturdays because he was tired of being harassed by the Los Angeles police department when he tried to open his own front door at home at the end of the day. My doctoral committee chair, Henry Louis Gates, of Harvard University, one of the most widely known, famous Black scholars in America was arrested for ‘breaking and entering’ by the Cambridge police a few years ago because he was on his own front porch unlocking his own front door; remember:
Heterogeneous societies are prone to conflict and are most frequently the sort of society that can most easily descend into civil war. So-called ‘ethnic differences’ are most often cited by news services and by geopolitical ‘experts’ as the reason for civil conflicts in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe (though the truth is a lot more complicated than that). Extreme heterogeneity such as America always has and always will create, can be a risk to cultural cohesion and to civil order, but FORCED homogeneity is not a good situation either. Forcing homogeneity while ALSO continuing to segregate, humiliate, abuse, exploit, and silence so-called ‘minorities’ only leads to the buildup of resentment, anger, and eventually rage, on the parts of those being oppressed, and eventually, violence will be the result, even civil war (as in Iraq, Pakistan, Indo-China, Serbia, Croatia, Burundi, Rawanda, and Syria).
True homogeneous feeling within a population has to be based on equality of opportunity and freedom of expression, as well as respect for each other’s cultures, languages, differences, and ethnic origins. SHARING our differences and seeing each other as having one very important common possession (democracy) is the only way to defeat the hatred and violence that America can easily descend into. That means we have to adopt the principle that NONE are free and safe unless ALL are free and safe.
I know you didn’t ask about all that, but forgive me, I’m an educator–I write, read, think, and talk too much, I’m afraid, my friend.
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Correction: I SHOULD have written in the last two lines of the second paragraph:
“They were sent to school in order to preserve an ideal of HOMOGENEITY in spite of America’s overwhelmingly HETEROGENEOUS society.
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Rayfield
Well said….
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@Rayfield A. Waller: Thank you for the comprehensive post. So would I be right in thinking that the kind of solution you are thinking of is to have real equality (equal rights, equal treatment, no special white privileges, no special black suspectness, etc.) and to form a unity based on common cultural values, namely democracy, that can provide the underlying “homogeneous” glue required to get lasting cohesion, but without force? And would that allow for an American society to have diverse cultures represented within it and yet be stable? But wouldn’t it still be _culturally_ “heterogeneous”? Does this mean a _culturally_ “heterogeneous” society can still be stable after all, provided that differences are “shared” and there is an underlying common thread and “ALL are free and safe” with “equal opportunity and free expression for all”? That were America to reach such a state, it too could persist for ages?
What do you think of the words “unity in diversity”? Does it fit in any way with what you are thinking about?
I’m curious about this as well: what would it take to get “real” ethnic identity for White Americans, and what will it take to stop the continued discrimination and repression against Americans of Color in favor of “white supremacy”? In other words, what can we do to achieve that real equality? It seems there is deep-seated hatred too — what can be done about this? (Every time a black person is called “n-you-know-what” by a white person is an expression of hatred, or at least prejudice)
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@Rayfield A. Waller: I was curious about one last thing — when you gave that big post about the importance of “reading” and “thinking”, and how college degrees weren’t needed — does this mean one can become a good intellectual thinker without needing to shell out for a college degree, even a “liberal arts” degree? By studying that kind of thing yourself, without the expensive college feeding it to you?
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^ mike4ty4
Ha-ha,you are asking that question to a university professor — there might be some conflict of interest there. 😛
Indeed, there is no need to spend a lot of money to get educated. Most of it you can do yourself. If you are learning how to splice spinal cord nerves together, you might want to pay money to get the best teacher, but that is not needed for most things.
If you plan to “practice” later, some people might want to see some credential proof before they hire you or pay for your services. It is evidence that you completed a course of training or education. But it is just evidence – you can get educated however way you can.
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Rayfield A. Waller
I want to apologize because I believe in my responses to Jimmy I refered to you as Mr. Walker.
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correction referred
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Sharina;
No problem, Sharina. Thanks again for calling me on my arrogance earlier.
Ray
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@ everyone;
‘college’ intellectuals were un-needed prior to the 19th century. Most real intellectuals (‘organic’ intellectuals) were people who simply READ. Did you know that Abraham Lincoln, like many lawyers of the 19th century was NOT a ‘law school graduate’ but was self educated, studying under a certified lawyer? He went to ‘school’ for no more than a year. The process in Illinois was to “obtain a certificate procured from the court of an Illinois county certifying to the applicant’s good moral character” according to the law at that time. Lincoln went to the clerk of the Illinois Supreme Court to take the oath supporting the Constitution of the United States and of Illinois.state, pledging that he would “in all things faithfully execute the duties of Attorney and Counselor at Law.” and became Abe Lincoln, licensed attorney at law.
I believe John Adams also, went through pretty much the same process nearly 100 years earlier. Throughout the 1700’s and 1800’s becoming a lawyer for many Americans became lawyers not expressly by going to ‘law school’ but by a process called ‘reading the law’ usually with a willing judge or practicing lawyer willing to act as an official tutor.
Then too, you might want to look up “The Frankfort School” a European movement of German intellectuals who represent a custom for European intellectuals prior to the 20th century who taught themselves by READING–some of them were journalists, teachers, some did get degrees, but degrees were not the primary way one became an intellectual in Europe until the 20th century and even then it was not the only way.
Also, consider Einstein: he was a patent clerk throughout the time he worked on, wrote up, and published his theories of electro-magnetism, motion, special relativity. He had a degree, but had done very poorly as a college student, and could not get a university job after graduation because he was horrible as an academic. Most academics if they are being honest will tell you that a lot of what professors do is procedural and based on committee work and very focused research (rather than true critical or ground breaking research). It is a VERY recent development that anyone would wish to associate a college degree with ‘having qualifications’. Qualifications for WHAT? The myths of capitalism have filled everyone’s heads with the idea that you go to college to become ‘expert’ at something and to get a ‘job’. Ha! What a joke. Prior to WWII, CLASS determined your ability to join the professions more than formal education. Universities were not admitting workers, women, dark Europeans, Blacks, or veterans. If you were ruling class, you went to college as a formality just to have a ‘credential’ to lend legitimacy to the inevitable privilege that all the WHITE MEN with RICH FAMILIES had allowing them to walk right in to whatever professions they wanted to.
After WWII the GI BILL and various other federal interventions, and middle class welfare initiatives CREATED the so-called ‘middle class’ and started the opening up of the university system to all Americans (women, natives, Blacks, Italians, veterans, immigrants, etc.) I mean prior to the 1940’s, not even women were allowed onto college campuses as regular students (co-ed education) and as anything other than secretarial, nursing, and teacher’s college students!
Americans don’t learn history and so they don’t know where social and public policies came from or what they ultimately mean. That space in our memory is filled by pop culture, TV, advertising, and bad movies among other artifacts of the entertainment industry. Most Americans were not even allowed onto a college campus prior to 1960. Who do Americans have to thank then for the past fifty years of access to higher education as a universal right? Blacks, Latinos, women, and Natives who raged riots, rebellions, protests, and demonstrations and civil rights demands throughout the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.
Finally, pick up a typical college textbook and you’l notice it is not a real ‘book’ to be read. It’s a tightly focused, oversimplified, summary of basic facts and data set up to be memorized by students so they can regurgitate the data onto tests and quizzes. I am that rare professor (there still are a few of us) who requires my students to read actual books–four of five per semester. I require essay exams instead of true or false and multiple choice ‘tests’. Do my students appreciate that they are getting an education? No. They how; and wail and cry out, ‘unfair! I didn’t go the college to READ!”
Now ask yourself: do you really feel more secure about hiring a builder who is ‘college educated’ to fix your roof rather than an old fashioned carpenter who went through an apprenticeship with a older carpenter and builder the old fashioned way? Do you feel safer being flown in a 747 jumbo jetliner by a pilot who went to ‘aviation school’ in Florida, or a pilot who learned to fly in the military flying combat missions in navy jets and who learned to fly by actually flying?
Just raising some questions and thoughts, that’s all. Capitalism is so evil partly because it eliminates diversity, experience, knowledge, and even common sense as we learn from it to look at life as if everything is a packaged commodity on a store shelf valued by the price it is marked at. What America is all about is the superior ability and love of our grandmothers’ cooking over whatever the hell that is we see on the “Food Network”. College gets you a college degree. That’s all it can guarantee. Since the rich folk lost their special access on college campuses and had to all retreat to their Ivy League campuses in the sky high above and out of common folks’ reach, the university education can train us, but few universities are still interested in educating us.
Now watch this connection I am going to make:
THAT’s why ignorant people who don’t know history, economics, and geo politics are still having this silly debate over whether or not Africans ‘sold’ their own people into ‘slavery’.
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@Rayfield A. Waller: But which few universities would they be? I noticed you mentioned Yale and Cornell programs in an earlier post. But those seem like very expensive universities, if they’re the ones you’re talking about — so it seems the non-school-based approach may be the only one left if you’re not rich.
Also, with regards to who I’d pick for a carpenter, or a pilot, simple: the one (up to whatever budget permits) with the most hands-on experience and the best reputation from their clients and peers who can attest to the quality of their work, and who can demonstrate their skill to me.
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oh yeah most online contractor labor websites have metrics on performance timelyness etc like ebay feedback
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yay i could read latin at a 500 level in undergrad and i can write poems in english but i’m a computer tech. a lot of companies really need to see the degree, but there are a lot of online distance learning options now. i gotta hear i’m the only one in the family without an advanced degree
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My POINT was that we need to free our MINDS and realize what the HISTORY of education in America is really all about–it is not really about education it is about training the population. The elite universities ARE expensive, so that we won’t be able to afford them. Get it? The ruling class does not want us. They want us uneducated so they can use us. And speaking of my good buddy Marx–there is no contradiction whatsoever between Malcolm X, Marx, John Adams Ho Chi Minh, Alexander Hamilton, and Joan of Ark and Hatshepsutt, which is another truth they want us not to know. All those people simply wanted humanity to WAKE UP. As the poet says in “Poem for the Americans”:
In dreams I think I’m free.
I think I fight my enemy,
I feel I’ll get my gilded wings and fly,
That only I will win my palace up on high
Where the footless cerulean rulers wait for me,
Footless, welcoming brothers, those terrible powers that be
There waiting for me If only I can defeat my enemies,
Those rabble who are colored, injun, Jew, white, anglo, arab
brown, godless, cracker, nappy, greasy, queer, tall, small,
russian, iraqi, cuban, atheist, communist, or (gods!) a woman.
All of them alien, wild eyed and all untamed,
Whom I must subdue with righteous flame,
So that I can claim what is meant only for mine and me:
The mantle of my mastery!
To defeat the other crabs and make my way up, up, up,
While far below me my enemies fear and quake,
But then I awake.
Americans. You gotta love ’em. eh?
So, nobody has any desire to say ‘thank you’ to Blacks, women, natives, and Latinos and veterans and communists who protested and burnt things down and marched and occupied campus buildings so that we could even HAVE a discussion about what value a college degree has?
here’s a possible conclusion to the debate about whether Africans sold their own people into slavery: is a better question whether Americans have sold OUR selves into slavery to popular culture and to capitalism and to memory loss?
Is it time to end this string of discussion?
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http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/25226-us-qhumanitarianq-bombing-of-iraq-a-redundant-presidential-ritual
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@Rayfield A. Waller: Yes, I think this is a good conclusion. I guess I just keep getting these nagging thoughts saying “but you need a college!” But that’s probably not true.
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how can you embrace an ideology that has eliminated more than 100 million people? not even in war, just elimnated them because they didnt follow the ideaology….you have to be joking, Rayfeild
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@Rayfield
I witnessed your point first hand many times as I worked in the warehouse for a large drug wholesaler and for the big Home Depot. In the 80’s when I first started working for the drug wholesaler their policies were traditional when promoting or hiring upper management or operations managers. They brought in several newly graduated students and would at first put them to work doing typical labor; filling orders, stocking shelves, sweeping, etc. They of course were not very efficient but that was to be expected. What was not expected was how horrible they were once they were placed in a managers position. They attempted to apply what they learned in school to what we were doing in the warehouse and for the most part it was a complete fail. They did however do well in some aspects of our work that required structured management skills, like scheduling and using the proper language when dealing with problems. But as far as efficiency, overtime, getting the lazy guys motivated, fixing basic mechanics of our work, they were as bad as you can get. Eventually upper management promoted one of our own and we had huge success for several years until another change. We were working 12 hours plus days, 6 days a week until our inside man took over and those numbers went down to 6 hours a day and only those who requested worked on Saturday. Sadly Steve, our inside guy, could not be promoted any further because he did not have a degree….common sense has left the building.
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The moral code was first broken by men who came to Africa and sought to enslave human beings. The moral code was broken when men introduced riches to Africans in exchange for human beings, the men whom said to these African leaders, “Gold, fur and weapons are more important than your sons and daughters”.
Who is more evil, the man with a broken heart and broken existence or the Drug dealer that offers him a way to escape these problems and gets him hooked.
So you see as the white man dangled riches and power in the tribal leaders face he is clearly the Devil in this mix…his actions afterwards parallel Satan himself!
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@B. R.
That was a little mystifying because you have utterly no topic sentence, no objective, discursive reference to what the heck you are talking about, and no direct quotes from ME, but I assume you must be talking about my mention of Communism or Marxism, which, by the way, thanks to the Communist Party USA and their dogged support for the American Union movement, particularly The IWW and the UAW, you and I have a five day, forty hour work week and overtime and breaks, and a toilet for employees, and access to clean water in the workplace, and on and on, such as the ways in which American Communists fought to remove human flesh from our food (try reading Upton Sinclair’s book, “The Jungle” which details the horror of pre class war America when children’s limbs were ripped off their bodies and when human flesh was allowed into our meat by slaughter houses. So show some appreciation and give some props, my friend…
Read more SLOWLY and more CAREFULLY, because I think you are confusing Karl Marx, whom I mentioned, and who was an ECONOMIST, not a POLITICAL THEORIST, with Josef Stalin, a mass murderer who ended all traces of true Marxism in the Soviet Union when he murdered Lenin, and established a monarchy under the guise of fascist bureaucratic dictatorship (try reading “The Prophet Outcast” by Isaac Deutscher, a book about revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, and a book that incidentally explains minutely the late history of the Communist Party in Russia, the rise of Leninism, and the destruction of Marxism by those who called themselves ‘Marxist’ even as they were murdering everyone who really was.
But then, you’re an American, aren’t you? That kind of political betrayal ought to be thoroughly FAMILIAR to you. Look around you: do you see any traces left of true capitalism (corporate capitalism, launched by the slave trade, is not capitalism) or of true democracy? Which politicians in America betrayed those two ideologies and left you high and dry with nuclear waste in your cornflakes and global warming enlarging your bald spot and drenching you with hurricanes and tornadoes?
Hint: one of them murdered quite a few Latin Americans in Nicuragua, Salvador, and several other central American countries where America committed genocide, and he had a first name that started with R-O-N-A…Last name started with R-E-A-G….
Anyway, SLOW DOWN and think more about what you are reading and what you are saying.
LOL.
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my student loans is like $156k
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Rayfield , its funny when people think communists were responsible for those changes , a whole lot of other people were responsible too…that is a psych ,to imply communists were responsible for that….in truth , real communists want the American capitalist system to colapse….real communists infiltrate valid left moviments , and taint them with their robotic rhetorical drek…how can you stomach their rhetoric ? Only fundimentalist religion is more dogmatic , but , they both have a lot in common , demanding one to suspend the truth and beleive in fairy tales , distortions and lies , and blindly follow along…
Read a book? How about immerse yourself in on the ground Marxists , anarchists and anti capitalists , like I see here in Brazil, for several decades taking in as much information as possible , for example , the experiance of watching self identified Marxists streaming out on the streets last year , waving their red flags , infiltrating legitimate protests and then turning them into violent anti capitalist , clichêd dogmad pseudo revolutionary actions against their hated state …while breaking things that the real people need and use , burning public transportatiin , and causing massive problems for the real people to just do their daily work. For sure their are legitimate social concerns to protest , but , in pseudo che loving , commie flag waving , violent hands , it gets turned into distorted disgusting havoc. and many of these people come right out of the same insulated university ivory walls you do , read the books you did , and tout Marx like you…not to implicate you , who has said many things I admire…but who has obviously embraced Marx
Marxs own manifesto implies armed revolution, and united front to over throw capitalism
But not only that, in his manifesto , he mandates that you cant start your own business, or you are labeled the tired word burguoise …now if that doesnt give you a hint to his flaws , you just have to see what state the flagship communist countries ended up in….its not just Stalin , look at North Korea, a lifetime of Castros , China has turned repressivly authoritarian capitalist , leaders of the Khemer Rouge were just found guilty of eliminating 2 million under their rule
Shift your debate to Brazil , that is my expertise, I honestly cant speak with any depth on central America, except , after discovering the real truth of the cold war in Brazil , a similar dynamic played out everywhere two conflicting sides in their dirty wars with each other, eagarly invited in the big super powers for help…all sides were dirty…people will never tell the truth about the cold war until they admit that….and other truth was multi millions being eliminated in various countries under Marxist regimes….that is what huge numbers if people were fighting against …and , it got dirty…overthrowing democraticly elected presidentes to replace them with dictators….but , in Brazil , for example , thank god the wanna be ches didnt succeed in their failed attemted armed revolution
Im in total agreement about what capitalism has become in America, and I hate hyper predatory capitalism as much as far left communism…Im no mcarthiest or Fox news mouth peice seeing commies in social programs , I want capitalism with a concience…
But , I blame all of us for letting it happen , because we love to be spoon fed by these corporations , and they have gotten so slick they can sell revolution with a che tee shirt , a Chomski book and Rage Against The Machine Cd
In truth , we could bring the corporations to their knees if we really wanted to
I kind of see slavery in America as a precourcer to both capitalism and communism, a plantation is more like a communist dictatorship where everyone works for the good of the state/estate, under a master/dictator…with free health care….but no education…know what I mean?
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@ B.S.:
I am only going to take this time to answer you because I think it’s possible to finally discourage your kind of flippant, derailing activity, a form of writing that shows itself so often on this site. I hope so, anyway. Let’s start with one of your apparent derailing attempts:
“its funny when people think communists were responsible for those changes.”
Really? I don’t know ANYONE who knows history well enough to even KNOW what a ‘communist’ IS (which I strongly suspect you don’t) who thinks the CPUSA were ‘responsible’ for the ‘changes’ (more like historical paradigm shifts than ‘changes’) that I actually wrote about and that anyone can read, that you apparently didn’t. I certainly did not say that. Besides, those ‘whole lot of other people’ you speak of had communists AMONG them, and I believe that my assertion was articulate enough to have made this fact clear in what I wrote if you go back and really read it.
Not only did you not read what I wrote closely and slowly enough you seem to think that ‘communists’ were some sort of isolated gang, or club. The CPUSA was composed of AMERICAN CITIZENS. There were academic communists, working class communists, celebrity communists, Hollywood communists, Black communists, a hell of a LOT of immigrants who were communists, housewives, iron workers, steel workers, textile workers, auto workers, artists, writers, musicians, politicians, public school teachers, and government workers who were communists, so it goes without saying that they WERE ‘a whole lot of people’. You’re wrong about most of what you say–and you are citing practically nothing to support most of it (Rage Against the Machine, Che Guevara on a t-shirt, and Chomsky [Noam, I presume] hardly qualify as citations to support your claims).
Yes, you really should read not just ‘a’ book but a whole lot of books. You’re not supporting anything you say. You ought to have at LEAST read a bit of each of the books I mentioned before responding to (as it turns out none) of what I was really saying to you. It is very tiring to communicate with someone who is gnawing away at tiny bits and pieces of what I post. If you reject my ideas, why not just be honest and say you feel threatened by them, then you can ignore me and not have to think of ways to avoid really dealing with me, really reading, and focusing on my actual CLAIMS. Instead, like moles do, you are going round and round in circles over bits and pieces. For instance, you say (wrongly) that ‘true’ communists wish for capitalist economy to collapse (what is a ‘true’ communist?? Do you mean market communism, social communism, party communism, soviet communism, Maoists, political economy as communists theorize it, or do you mean Marxist communism? Leninism? What the—? )
The irony of whatever it is you think you are trying to say, shrouded in the kiddie myths of high school mis-education that we all got and we all need to take responsibility for overcoming, is that if all communists wanted were for capitalism to collapse, then they have already gotten what they want–capitalism collapsed decades ago, didn’t you know? What we live under now is a false market economy propped up by finance plutocracy, criminal inflation of the debt, the printing of phony paper currency detached from the gold standard, printed willy-nilly by the Federal Reserve (not a federal entity, by the way), and runaway deficits no longer grounded in our former material production economy, now gone. Finance capitalism, My Dear B.S., is NOT capitalism as in free markets and GNP/GDP, based upon production of goods, material services, and commodities. Likewise, the truth is that communist-Menshevist economy lasted a few scant years in the Soviet Union just as Marxism-Leninism lasted only a few scant years before Bolshevism fell to Stalinism and dictatorship was established, much like the robber baron dictatorship established here in America in the 1930’s.
THINK: the same American companies, baronies, and increasingly multinational industrial magnates whose Pinkerton thugs fought for them against American freedom during the class wars here, were the ones who backed and armed Hitler during WWII, and who gave Stalin all he needed at the Conferences at Yalta and Potsdam, establishing the tyranny that would rule the Eastern bloc countries. The power this gave to Stalin in turn supported his brutal ‘collectivization’ plan and his destruction of nationalist movements such as in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
As for the fact that there is none of this ‘capitalism’ YOU speak of, we make nothing in the US now. How do you figure that equals capitalism? When I speak of capitalism I am speaking of CORPORATE capitalism–plutocracy and kleptocracy. For instance, this may inform you of how naive you sound: the stock marker has SOCIALIST devices and stopgaps built into it now, hello! Such as the Marxist provision, effective back on April 8, 2013, a provision called the Limit Up – Limit Down Plan. You see the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) authorized amendments to Rule 80B (which stipulates that all trading will cease in the event of extraordinary market volatility–in the enevt that the market seems to be about to lose a lot of money for the rule class). This lowered the thresh hold of halt provisions and of so-called ‘circuit-breaker’ levels, that established duration of trading halts linked to percentages of loss, and stipulates what those percentages are. Here’s a citation for you to let you know what I’m talking about:
https://www.nyse.com/markets/nyse/market-model
But I doubt you will read it, you aren’t that serious. If you were serious and actually wanted to learn, you would take up the challenge I made to you to READ and THEN form opinions, rather than trying to undermine what I say, which clearly, you don’t understand in the first place. I am saying essentially the same things I have always said, and that lay behind all the posts I have written at this site, which anyone who reads me closely knows. My themes always are:
1. The complexity of American history, particularly economic history and exposing the simplicity of myths and lies..
2. The former power and influence Americans used to possess before we gave up on ourselves politically (something like only half of Americans vote in national elections now) and let our solidarity (the union movements) and our knowledge (the educational system and the need for literacy) corrode.
3. The multi-ethnic, multicultural history and future of this nation, a future that will FORCE us to grow up, stop holding onto our child-like ‘racial’ and ethnic grudges against each other, and deal with the fact that 1/3rd of the American population will be Latino in the future, 2/3rds including some of the Latinos will be classified as ‘Coloreds’, 60 % will be female, and that our borders will be porous and permeable, not impenetrable due to some psychotic illusion that we can build a ‘wall’ around our thousands of miles of borderland (???!). America will become something like ‘Amerigovia’–a tripartite state combining parts of the North American region with parts of Mexico and Central America.
4. The future of the entire planet is African, Indian, and Asian, whether you like it or not.
5. The necessity to READ BOOKS. Yes, I actually do or have READ everything I cite when I offer sources on this post. It’s what I do. I don’t fake.
6. If you DO read books, know history (rather than simply cutting and pasting history from leery web sources), and seriously THINK about things rather than spending your time on ‘hot terms’, ‘trigger words’, derailing arguments (which aren’t really arguments since they have no claims and no support to them) and myths, you know that AFRICANS COULD NOT HAVE SOLD THEMSELVES INTO ‘SLAVERY’, which is the whole point of this discussion string in the first place.
You write about how you ‘feel’, like so many ankle biters, and you post incredibly goofy propositions such as :
“Shift your debate to Brazil , that is my expertise, I honestly cant speak with any depth on central America, except , after discovering the real truth of the cold war in Brazil”
Gee, if ‘Brazil’ is your ‘expertise’ why didn’t you actually say anything coherent about Brazil in relation to the claims I wrote that you are supposedly responding to? And what are you talking about, anyway? Brazilian culture? Politics? Economics? Population shifts? Modernity? Ethnography? Are you talking about cold war Brazil independent from the significance of the Coup of 1930 and the fall of The Old Republic? Are you aware of Vargasismo? Are you referring to the right wing military junta that seized power in 1964 with the backing of the US intelligence community and the VERY SAME corporations that were pushing the US state department to do the same in CENTRAL America? How do you claim expertise in the ’64 Coup without taking into account the overthrow of democratically elected president, Arbenz Guzman In Guatemala (in the CIA operation, “PBSUCCESS”)? Here is a link to the National Security Archive, which details PBSUCCESS, and that will lead you to a little deeper knowledge of ‘the cold war’ in ALL of Latin America:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/
It really is a shame that your ‘expertise is so limited, because one ultimately will have little idea what the significance of the events of the cold war were for Brazil if one cannot connect it to the events I was describing in the rest of Latin America that you apparently have nothing to say about. The genocides committed by America in the Central American states, as well as the American manipulation of South American states, are substantial geo-politically–I can assure you that I DO have plenty to say and plenty of books to recommend to you so you can enlarge your ‘expertise’ when you are talking about ‘the cold war’. Brazil was a satellite of the West during the cold war, much like Mexico, like much of the Caribbean and EXACTLY like other parts of Latin America, which was largely either a satellite of the West or of Soviet influence
That means that if you had truly read and understood what I was saying about Central America and America’s acts of genocide there, and if you understood geo-politics you wouldn’t dare embarrass yourself by claiming ‘expertise’ about Brazil while at the same time admitting that you “can’t speak with any depth on Central America” (??), What is the significance of the Organization of American States, the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the present-day Inter-American Commission, the USAID, and the various CIA-backed GO’s and NGO’s as well as the organizations backed by The World Bank and the UN? Brazilian history does not exist in a vacuum, and in fact you ought to have been able to easily see the relationship between Brazil and my comments on Central America! How is South America detachable from the rest of Latin America, PARTICULARLY with regard to the cold war?? Are you aware of the American Fruit Company?
Don’t ever claim isolated regional ‘expertise’– you will embarrass yourself even worse in real life if you are talking to historians and global studies analysts than you will on a blog post.
Another goofy proposition of yours:
“I kind of [‘KIND OF’? ARE YOU MAKING A CLAIM OR NOT?] see slavery in America as a precourcer [you mean PRECURSOR] to both capitalism and communism [HOW SO? ECONOMICALLY? IN ,MARKET TERMS? SOCIALLY? MOST ECONOMISTS SEE SLAVERY IN ANCIENT ROME, NOT AMERICA AS PREFIGURING THE ECONOMICS OF THE AMERICAN PLANTATION SYSTEM!] , a plantation is more like a communist dictatorship where everyone works for the good of the state/estate [THIS IS FACILE– SORRY, YOU NEED TO READ ECONOMICS, THIS IS NOT A DESCRIPTION OF COMMUNISM, NOT EVEN OF COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP, IF YOU MEAN THE BOLSHEVISM OF THE POST REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIAN SOVIETS AND FARM COLLECTIVES UNDER STALINIST DICTATORSHIP OR OF POST MAOIST CHINA’S “GREAT LEAP FORWARD’], under a master/dictator…with free health care [CLEARLY THIS IS JUST A SICKLY DROLL JOKE ON YOUR PART, EVEN IF OFFENSIVE]….but no education…know what I mean?”
Now go ahead and ankle bite and signal jam if you want. Chew away if you must at isolated terms and words you don’t understand, and claims I didn’t make, and try to derail my propositions without presenting any counter propositions or sources. Unless you start supporting some of your claims and citing some sources, I am simply going to ignore you…
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Why did you ban this Thadeus person, he was very inspiring and made me stay on here waaay longer than I should.
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Abagond only bans people if they break the clearly stated rules, and even then he usually gives them several warnings before banning them. If they ignore his warnings and continue to break the rules, he finally bans them. You’ll find those rules in the “Comment Policy” section of this website:
Abagond says in that section something that is very clear and very revealing of his basic expectations of us all. He says, ” Imagine that I have invited you to my house for dinner.”
He specifically warns us that we can be banned for:
Repeatedly violating the comment policy
Ignoring [Abagond’s] warnings
Using a sock puppet
Threatening other commenters
Calling for violence
Obviously, Thaddeus did not respect these rules.
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um, br it was the socialist and populist movements that really gave the american unions the interstate cohesion and will to resist the strike breakers in the 1880s-1930s in the us, sorry dude
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thaddeus was a troll from hell, his avatar is used by other white supremacists
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oh, br, you must have a doctor, or something. i guess. i wouldnt know about that, god forbid a dentist, have a nice day
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[…] Africans sold their own into slavery. The Arabs traded slaves too! […]
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Please don’t paint all white Americans with the same brush. All you have to do is add a qualifier like “some” and it makes your whole argument stronger.
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Jesse K.
Or he could just say white Americans (which he did) because that is not a qualifier of all whites. It is not the job of a writer to tweek their writing for those who lack comprehension.
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I ask somebody this one question. Nobody can’t find a good answer for my question. Europeans wouldn’t super wealthy back in those time. White slaves like the Irish was cheap. Native American slaves was a middle cost. African slaves was experience for a thousand of reason. Where the money from trillion of slaves for african traders to live on like Kings. Our money was different around the old time. Would some african people live like the white jewish people in this modern world?Would Africa would been more powerful in financial-business.
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The entire point to this article is that many whites, mostly conservative, like to deflect ownership of slavery in this country. So instead of being sympathetic, empathetic and a bit shameful given our country perpetuated such horrific behavior against a fellow human being, they point the finger at the one rich African who sold his own people instead of the 3,000 white men standing in line to rape 10 year old slave girls. They point out that Britain enslaved Irish men and women 1,000 years ago on two islands on another continent, instead of talking about Thomas Jefferson raping women and fathering dozens of babies who he then sold into slavery, his own CHILDREN. They like to say that slaves could have gone home when the country ratified the constitution, instead of pointing out that their family was born and raised here 4 generation deep and how in the world would going back to Africa be a sensible decision after being a native of Africa is no longer possible for them after being forcibly turned into a completely different people who are dysfunctional, oppressed and wounded emotionally and physically. Instead of offering their sympathy and an ear to listen to their thoughts, their pain and their struggles they like to play the detached white guy who believes that if they were Black they would forget about slavery and racism and poverty and just shoot to the top pf the economical ladder by pulling up their boot straps and getting by on their own accord. There is not a Black person in this country who hasn’t gotten ahead by his own accord because you can guarantee no white man helped him. However being a white man I can guarantee you that every one of us white guys have had several hands helping us out as we make it to mediocrity. The fact we are white gives us a 4 to 1 advantage over people of color and especially Blacks, if we have to turn in 5 job applications a Black man has to turn in 20, if we have to wait 10 years for a promotion a Black man is likely to not get one or wait 40 years and the bullshit goes on and on. Instead of these whites admitting that Blacks are the ones responsible for the toiled soil that reaped harvest after harvest, built our railroads, fought in every war, burped our grandparents babies, cooked for our ancestors children, tended to our sick forefathers and bled on this land for alienable rights every human being should be granted at birth, they like to act like this country did them a favor by ENSLAVING them and keeping them OPPRESSED for 400 years. That is ultimately what this article is about. We don’t care about Irish slaves, German slaves, Christian slaves…..we are talking about AMERICA and slavery of BLACK AMERICANS by WHITE AMERICANS that took place not 1,000 years ago but a mere 150 years ago but actually continued in many ways until the 1970’s when the Laws were changed and of course the Law still didn’t change hearts and most of those have yet to change, Only the passage of time and death will complete that portion of history.
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@ William
Very articulate, passionate, and oh, so true!
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Thank you Rayfield…a bit fragmented but it has been a long hot week in Cali and I am very tired….
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@ William
Fragmented, not! Clear, lucid, and right to the point:
“Instead of these whites admitting that Blacks are the ones responsible for the toiled soil that reaped harvest after harvest, built our railroads, fought in every war, burped our grandparents babies, cooked for our ancestors children, tended to our sick forefathers and bled on this land for alienable rights every human being should be granted at birth, they like to act like this country did them a favor by ENSLAVING them and keeping them OPPRESSED for 400 years. That is ultimately what this article is about.”
Now, the question, William, is this– are people reading what you said closely enough or will some try to latch onto minor details and seek to derail your valid and sound logic?
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@William
Great comment. You are a rare bird, William, a rare bird indeed.
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@Rayfield and Pamela….Thank you, I won’t lie it makes me feel good to hear your compliments.
@Rayfield…..”are people reading what you said closely enough or will some try to latch onto minor details and seek to derail your valid and sound logic?”
I guess it will depend on who is reading it…
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Right.
More like a White Uncle Tom, eh??
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@Jimmy Shirley……….Misery likes company, eh??
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@Jimmy
Well, Jimmy, that was an enigmatic statement. Not sure what that was supposed to mean, but a ‘white’ Uncle Tom would be a reversal of Beecher Stowe’s literary character, right? So where Tom is servile and castrated, William is courageous and has integrity, has the force of conviction. Right?
There is a long, honorable line of Anglo heroes who would fit the ‘white Uncle Tom’ role…
Senator Charles Sumner, White leader of the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts and an abolitionist US Senator, who was savagely attacked and beaten almost to death on the US Senate floor by a fellow politician driven by the White hatred so many slavery advocates felt for ‘race traitor’ Sumner in the 1800’s.
Minister and abolitionist lion, John Brown who led the military raid on Harper’s Ferry that is credited with provoking the start of the civil war; an act for which Brown paid with his life, being hanged for treason.
Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy, who late in his privileged life became a fierce champion of freedom and justice for Black Americans and who, if he had not been assassinated, would have been president and I believe would have gotten passed the Equal Rights Amendment for women and would have advocated reparations for Blacks.
Taylor Branch, White American scholar and author of the staggeringly erudite and sweeping chronicle of the civil rights era, “Parting the Waters” and of the powerful trilogy, “The King Years”.
Tim Wise, Anglo author, race activist, race historian and critic of American racism and class injustice, author of the book, “White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son.”
Robin Palmer, Yippie and former Weatherman, who was always described as ‘right wing’ for his hatred of neo-liberal post leftism late in his life, but a man whom I was dear friends with late in his life who opened his upstate home and family to me when I was a rootless, lonely graduate student at Cornell University. Robin despised President Clinton and disliked post communists ensconced in American culture, and he risked his freedom and his life as a young 60’s activist to fight for the end of racial, class, and gender oppression in America. He gave a pound of his flesh as one of the victims in the Attica rebellion who was abused and tortured by prison guards when he was a political prisoner of the state in Attica.
There are also the hundreds and hundreds of unnamed unknown men and women of Anglo ethnicity who ran, manned, and maintained the underground railroad from the southern states through Georgia and Kentucky to Ohio into Michigan all the way to my home town, Detroit and the edge of the Detroit River, across which lay Canada and freedom. I drive right past the last stop on the underground railroad every Tuesday and Thursday morning on my way to the college where I teach–it is the Church of the Mariner, right at the edge of the Detroit River.
My point is, not really knowing if you were being sarcastic or just offering an irony for consideration, I regard Anglo men and women like William to be powerful voices, martyrs, and heroes of liberation and of truth in America; these people should be honored and cherished. No society in remembered history has ever successfully thrown off slavery and racial/ethnic injustice without an awakening of conscience in the hearts and minds of individuals among the OPPRESSORS.
You see, Jimmy, only if ‘White’ people are freed from the chains of their own ignorance and malevolence can Black people ever truly win our freedom on these shores. Even James Baldwin, who had been so bitterly critical of the Kennedys when John Kennedy held the oval office and Robert Kennedy served as John’s amoral pit bull keeping civil rights demands at bay and away from John’s doorstep, even Baldwin, at the end of his life came to admit in an essay that was unpublished at the time of his death, that Robert Kennedy should be admitted to ‘The Pantheon of White Martyrs” because of Bobby’s transformation after his brother’s dirty, public execution.
Loving certain White people was never an alien concept to me, since my family was from the hell of Alabama, and had suffered the stripes and wounds of the civil rights movement and of the lynchings and beating of the Klan era of the fifties and sixties, fleeing to Detroit before I was born, where the multicultural reality of multiple immigrant communities, the Black communists, the progressive Whites in the union movement, and the tradition of White justice seekers that led to Walter Reuther, surrounded us even under urban segregation..These same elders in my family who had suffered the Klan in Alabama spoke lovingly of ‘Bobby’ who gained the respect and affection of Blacks in his last years as he embraced Black friends, advisers, and Black supporters, sat with Caesar Chavez, took advise from Russell Means, and founded a friendship with the Black woman playwright Adrienne Kennedy of the Black Arts Movement.
The compassion and the terrible wisdom from suffering that freed Bobby made him want to free us, and that, is the promise of a future of love and beauty this country and this democracy portends but has so far so seldom achieved. I
value William and listen to what he has to say, unmindful of any errors of missteps in his words, because he is someone whose consciousness and conscience is awakened, and thus he is a key that unlocks a doorway into the future my daughter must dwell in some day. I wish it to be for her a future with many Williams, and with as few Rush Limbaughs as possible. I cherish William and every White ‘Uncle Tom’ like him. I have his back because he has mine.
Imagine, after all the evil America has done to so many Americans, there is still within us all the possibility of love and respect for one another…
Only that future possibility can redeem the long history of our suffering.
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@Rayfield…..”Je suis honoré mon ami”
It must be thrilling for you to pass by historical locations and landmarks that redefined the worlds moral compass or veered it back on course….is it sometimes emotional as well? It would be for me, your post brought a tear to my eye, I can imagine what stopping your car and standing on the hollowed ground that was the underground railroad would be like. I so much want to get out of California and visit such locations in this great country that hold so much emotion and energy of the past. Places where people fought for survival, respect and for justice and paved the road for ALL of us today with their lives, blood, sweat and tears. This type of emotion and energy is absorbed into the Earth and surrounding area, only a physical visit could allow you to feel that energy I suppose. The internet has brought us closer and allowed us many new experiences but nothing will ever replace the physical human experience…..Good night my friends.
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@Jimmy
Well, Jimmy, that was an enigmatic statement. Not sure what that was supposed to mean, but a ‘white’ Uncle Tom would be a reversal of Beecher Stowe’s literary character, right? So where Tom is servile and castrated, William is courageous and has integrity, has the force of conviction. Right?
There is a long, honorable line of Anglo heroes who would fit the ‘white Uncle Tom’ role…
Senator Charles Sumner, White leader of the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts and an abolitionist US Senator, who was savagely attacked and beaten almost to death on the US Senate floor by a fellow politician driven by the White hatred so many slavery advocates felt for ‘race traitor’ Sumner in the 1800’s.
Minister and abolitionist lion, John Brown who led the military raid on Harper’s Ferry that is credited with provoking the start of the civil war; an act for which Brown paid with his life, being hanged for treason.
Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy, who late in his privileged life became a fierce champion of freedom and justice for Black Americans and who, if he had not been assassinated, would have been president and I believe would have gotten passed the Equal Rights Amendment for women and would have advocated reparations for Blacks.
Taylor Branch, White American scholar and author of the staggeringly erudite and sweeping chronicle of the civil rights era, “Parting the Waters” and of the powerful trilogy, “The King Years”.
Tim Wise, Anglo author, race activist, race historian and critic of American racism and class injustice, author of the book, “White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son.”
Robin Palmer, Yippie and former Weatherman, who was always described as ‘right wing’ for his hatred of neo-liberal post leftism late in his life, but a man whom I was dear friends with late in his life who opened his upstate home and family to me when I was a rootless, lonely graduate student at Cornell University. Robin despised President Clinton and disliked post communists ensconced in American culture, and he risked his freedom and his life as a young 60’s activist to fight for the end of racial, class, and gender oppression in America. He gave a pound of his flesh as one of the victims in the Attica rebellion who was abused and tortured by prison guards when he was a political prisoner of the state in Attica.
There are also the hundreds and hundreds of unnamed unknown men and women of Anglo ethnicity who ran, manned, and maintained the underground railroad from the southern states through Georgia and Kentucky to Ohio into Michigan all the way to my home town, Detroit and the edge of the Detroit River, across which lay Canada and freedom. I drive right past the last stop on the underground railroad every Tuesday and Thursday morning on my way to the college where I teach–it is the Church of the Mariner, right at the edge of the Detroit River.
My point is, not really knowing if you were being sarcastic or just offering an irony for consideration, I regard Anglo men and women like William to be powerful voices, martyrs, and heroes of liberation and of truth in America; these people should be honored and cherished. No society in remembered history has ever successfully thrown off slavery and racial/ethnic injustice without an awakening of conscience in the hearts and minds of individuals among the OPPRESSORS.
You see, Jimmy, only if ‘White’ people are freed from the chains of their own ignorance and malevolence can Black people ever truly win our freedom on these shores. Even James Baldwin, who had been so bitterly critical of the Kennedys when John Kennedy held the oval office and Robert Kennedy served as John’s amoral pit bull keeping civil rights demands at bay and away from John’s doorstep, even Baldwin, at the end of his life came to admit in an essay that was unpublished at the time of his death, that Robert Kennedy should be admitted to ‘The Pantheon of White Martyrs” because of Bobby’s transformation after his brother’s dirty, public execution.
Loving certain White people was never an alien concept to me, since my family was from the hell of Alabama, and had suffered the stripes and wounds of the civil rights movement and of the lynchings and beating of the Klan era of the fifties and sixties, fleeing to Detroit before I was born, where the multicultural reality of multiple immigrant communities, the Black communists, the progressive Whites in the union movement, and the tradition of White justice seekers that led to Walter Reuther, surrounded us even under urban segregation..These same elders in my family who had suffered the Klan in Alabama spoke lovingly of ‘Bobby’ who gained the respect and affection of Blacks in his last years as he embraced Black friends, advisers, and Black supporters, sat with Caesar Chavez, took advise from Russell Means, and founded a friendship with the Black woman playwright Adrienne Kennedy of the Black Arts Movement.
The compassion and the terrible wisdom from suffering that freed Bobby made him want to free us, and that, is the promise of a future of love and beauty this country and this democracy portends but has so far so seldom achieved. I
value William and listen to what he has to say, unmindful of any errors of missteps in his words, because he is someone whose consciousness and conscience is awakened, and thus he is a key that unlocks a doorway into the future my daughter must dwell in some day. I wish it to be for her a future with many Williams, and with as few Rush Limbaughs as possible. I cherish William and every White ‘Uncle Tom’ like him. I have his back because he has mine.
Imagine, after all the evil America has done to so many Americans, there is still within us all the possibility of love and respect for one another…
Only that future possibility can redeem the long history of our suffering.
—————————————————————————————————
Mr. Rayfield,
I am going to attempt a reply to this because I appreciate that you took so much tyme, effort, patience and passion into it. Not to misunderstand or to cast unfair aspersions my way, be it known to one and all I respect your position. Which is to say I disagree with your previous stated positions of so-called “”reparartions”, but I respect your positions, as they are well stated, eloquent and comprehensive.
My statements here will jump around some, as I am not as educated as you are, but my elementary school & high school teachers were when they could hold discipline in the classroom and were able to teach very well. Thus I learned a lot and praise them for it when I can.
I am not without compassion for the lot of the negro in this country. It truly was a raw deal you people got through no general fault of your own. Had I my way, having been around long enough to see the great wrongs committed against you people, I would go back in history to the Founding tymes of these United States, say after 1783 unto 1800, and get the White people here to send back all the Africans to their native lands as there were a tad over 1,000,000 Blacks living here in 1800. This act in and of itself, would preclude all the issues you people have unto this very day. The way it seems to me, those were pioneer, frontier tymes and your people would have gotten along just fine back then. Indeed, after the War to Prevent Southern Independence, there were some 200,000 plus Southern Americans who fled to Brazil, and carved out a place in the jungles and swamps, after having sworn to never live under the yankee yoke. You people would have been able to do the same in your native homeland in around 1800.
As for the abolitionists, it was more their burning hatred of Southrons and less their opposing slavery, as an abstract, that led their consciences. When Europeans came here, mostly those from the British Isles, they brought with them their own ancient prejudices. This is true unto this very day. Generally speaking, a certain group of them settled into yankeeland and a certain group in the Southland. As they despised each other where they came from, so did they here. Thus IMHO, Sumner and others cared less about the welfare of the Negro, though certainly a very few minority did indeed care, and cared more about their growing hatred of Southrons, slavery giving them an acceptable cover. Mayhaps you could use your place in academia to conduct a study of the attitudes the pioneers brought with them from their Fatherlands.
Of a truth, tis the inclination of a people towards freedom. History provides numerous examples of a people yearning for liberty. It also provides examples of a people resigned to their fates. Such is the inconsistency of the human animal.
In closing, I will say this about that. We must all figure out how to get along with each other. To you, that means NOT being an Uncle Tom to us. To me, it means the same thing, not being an Uncle Tom to you people. I can treat you with the dignity and courtesy deserved by all peoples. And I hope you would me as well. Human beings are the only animal that kills others for fun. Or so I have been told. To keep us from killing each other, metaphorically speaking, Understanding of each other is paramount. This can not happen by being lectured by you people. Would you folks set to be lectured by us? Probably not. So then we set and conversate back and forth, I speak, you listen. You speak and I listen. Cant be any other way and expect progress. Else, we are back to the drawing board.
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I am not without compassion for the lot of the negro in this country
God bless you dear!
Would you folks set to be lectured by us?
I take it you are a Southern gentleman? A Reb, or is it a Secess? Still pi$$ed off you lost the war between the States I see. Well get over it and stop propagating your lunacy. I can only laugh so much!
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@Jimmy Shirley….
Jimmy, “Shirley” you must know that someone “like you”, calling someone “like me”, a white Uncle Tom is the highest compliment I can think of bestowed upon my character….Thank you.
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@Jimmy
Thanks for the respect, Jimmy, but your thinking, as usual, is pitted with errors, false assumptions, and typical racist arrogance. I mean that all in a good way–because you do seem intelligent enough to one day recognize how wrong headed you are and to rehabilitate yourself. It has happened before. Even in Brazil.
Specifically, there are two terrible wrongs you utter that stand out from the more trivial ones. Those two I feel have to point out, and hopefully you will consider my objections, made respectfully, and perhaps reconsider your old timey old racist in a rocking chair on a porch attitude.
1. Man is the only animal who kills his own kind–people must be taught to not destroy one another, by not following their natural inclinations, or so you’ve been told.
You’ve ‘been told’ WRONG.
If your highly ordered and disciplined teachers had also been allowed to teach you anthropology, you might not be uttering such silliness. Open source, online education extension services now will allow Americans to take university courses online for free–no degree will result but all the knowledge you can eat! You can register for these services from universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, U.C.–Berkeley, Columbia, etc., taught by professors whose lectures are videotaped–it’s like being there in the classes. I strongly recommend to anyone who wants higher knowledge that they avail themselves of this recent, revolutionary source of education….Anthropology being only one subject Americans can now study at the university level for free.
Anthropology, history, economics, and the long story of human psychological development before ‘civilization’ began shows that the human race once lived in hunting-gathering societies spread across first one, and then several continents. These societies were the original ‘commune’ structure that so inspired the economic theories of Karl Marx and his writing partner, Friedrich Engels.
These nomadic, seasonally rooted bands of humans (homo erectus-Africanus, the original, full human specie who migrated to become homo-erectus Europa (Pangia) and eventually Australopithecus and all the rest) were peaceful, interdependent, and from all evidence, by the way, were MATRIARCHAL, not PATRIARCHAL. Women were in charge of many human societies based on loosely confederated kinship groups (native American kinship structures retained many of these traits even after the period of ‘civilization’ arose, and though they fought wars and became patriarchal, they retained communal relation to the land and had a far lesser degree of alienation in their social structures).
Elders formed councils of authority to settle disputes and to decide what actions should be taken within their own groups and within the larger society. Certainly there were disputes, crimes, and even murder existed (as exists in the wider animal kingdom, by the way–animals commit rape, murder, suicide, and suffer from depression and rage, as anyone who has ever watched ordinary house cats, just as an example, can tell) but for the most part human beings were NOT a depraved, murderous, crazed, competitive, violent specie. It was only when males, who were the majority of the hunters, gradually came to want to hold onto their weapons AFTER hunting season was done, and started to use those weapons to act out hostility and greed, overthrowing female rule and founding the concept of war out of greed for resources and land they had always traded for but now wanted to steal, that humans became feral–TOWNS and CITIES and TERRITORY developed and it was ‘civilization’ that led to widespread human violence, such as organized war.
Civilization, psychologists say, created the concept of ALIENATION. We are NOT programmed genetically to harm or hate one another. Only through the experience of ALIENATION from ourselves, from the land, and from each other, do we learn, sociologically, not biologically, to experience greed, hatred, and to seek violence. This concept is at the heart of a great deal of economic theory, though economists bury the psychology of it in math and in arcane theories of mass behavioral science.
Still, more than enough evidence exists for us to get educated about, to think clearly, free of myth and superstition, and to grow up and stop repeating those feudalistic lies from the middle ages told by monarchs, the ruling classes, and religious oppressors–such as the lie that humans are naturally crude and vicious–in order to justify their own class crimes against us, and to excuse their domination of the masses.
Your misconceptions, Jimmy, are a large part of the problem of overcoming racism, sexism, homophobia, and international conflict: racial oppression drives profit and domination and it protects itself by promoting alienation. Racial ‘hatred’ is merely ignorance. If I perceive you as being an extension of my kinship group and that group is ‘human beings’ rather than ‘black Detroiters’ then I will care about you, respect you, and come to your aid rather than compete with you for perceived scarce resources.
Scarcity too, is a myth. Thus, competition is not necessary, it is LEARNED. The truth is that the ruling classes and the dominating nations have created the LIE of scarcity. There is no scarcity of natural and replenishable resources (note: though the insane decision to continue to depend on oil and to insanely create nuclear sources of energy is a dependence on something non-replenishable, fusion energy and the sun are clean, eternal, and safe, but capitalism will not allow us to move toward those technologies); there is more than enough arable land on this planet to grow more than enough food for everyone, even with an exploding population, if we move away from the economicly mad waste of cost inefficient dependence on meat, end corporate farming, and undertake the redistribution of land and wealth with the aim to grow crops that can feed the people of the earth rather than feed corporate profits.. THE UNITED STATES ALONE DESTROYS MILLIONS OF TONS OF FOOD EVERY MONTH IN ORDER TO CREATE FALSE SCARCITY AND PROP UP CAPITALIST PROFITS BY KEEPING PRICES ARTIFICIALLY HIGH.
As Marx correctly theorized, Capitalism is irrational and a danger to the human race as an economic theory because it creates and must maintain scarcity and competition, crisis and poverty, alienation and suffering, so that there will always be ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. and thus, ‘profit’.
As an example of alienation as a driving force in our so-called ‘civilization’ under corporate capitalism, We are still arguing over whether to respect the human rights of gays and lesbians only because we are alienated from them. Notice how the country is shifting in it’s shameful attitude of hostility toward gays and lesbians, moving lately toward tolerance. Why? Because the YOUNGER GENERATION is going to school with gays and lesbians; our children in the colleges of this country have gay and lesbian friends. As gays and lesbians come out of the closet and we even realize that our own brothers, sisters, and uncles and aunts in our families are gay and lesbian, we cannot as easily dehumanize them.
The same was true for Black people in the fifties: Americans lynched and hated us, but by the 70’s we were so in the faces of Americans that we were seen and heard and less easily dehumanized. ALIENATION is the problem, arising from sick economic and sociological practices, not arising from our biology or our genes. As I have said and I’ll say again, my family’s exposure to loving, caring, and humane White people showed us that you cannot hate someone just because they are ‘White’. We are all of the same race–the human race. My family moved to the North partly so that their offspring (me) would have a chance to live a fuller life and be at home on the entire planet (which I assure you, I do, and I am not alienated from the ethnic or the racial ‘OTHER’, but love OTHERS as friends, lovers, mentors, and students).
2. Your second error in thinking is shown in your words, “As for the abolitionists, it was more their burning hatred of Southrons and less their opposing slavery, as an abstract, that led their consciences. When Europeans came here, mostly those from the British Isles, they brought with them their own ancient prejudices. This is true unto this very day. Generally speaking, a certain group of them settled into yankeeland and a certain group in the Southland. As they despised each other where they came from, so did they here.”
How gauche of you, Jimmy. A sort of subtle version of a simple derailing argument meant to throw wrench into a concept rather than do the mental work of coming up with a true counter argument. This opinion (wrench) of yours is almost child-like in it’s naivete, but too dangerous to let go uncommented upon as one would when an actual child says something equally naive. You are not a child and should know better than to insult the intelligence of we ‘Negros’ that you say you sympathize with because we are ‘generally’ not responsible for our own oppression in the U.S. I will comment on this frightfully foolish statement of yours by citing an analogy:
The Dutch family that hid Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis, risking their own safety and their own lives for some number of years by hiding Jews in their ‘attic’, were, some historians say, typical of the upper middle class Dutch, particularly the emigre, transplanted Dutch like Miep Gies, the young lady who worked for the Franks and then helped her adopted Dutch family hide them. It was Gies who saved and preserved Anne Frank’s diary after the Gestapo had discovered and arrested the Franks and taken them to their deaths at Auschwitz. Gies, a young girl who’d been adopted by the Dutch family protecting the Franks, was a native of Austria (like Herr Sigmund Freud and Herr Arnold Shwartzenegger, to orient you to what Austria is).
Some Austrians felt a great dread of and in fact a snotty cultural contempt for the Germans and for the Nazis (the eventual fascism of Kurt Waldheim and of Arnold Schwartzenegger’s father notwithstanding). It is theorized that the family of Gies Miep (born Hermine Santruschitz in Vienna) sought a better life in a more ‘civilized’ part of Europe for their daughter, but then that is just a theory. What is fact is that Miep was one of the Dutch citizens who hid the Franks, along with four other Jews in an annex above Anne’s father’s business premises during World War II, which had become the Dutch family’s premises, of course, once all the Jews were abducted from Amsterdam.
Here’s the point of how insane you sound, Jimmy: do you think it mattered then or now, to Jewish victims of the Nazis that Dutch citizens were so moved to protect and defend Jews perhaps not so much out of love of Jews, but out of hatred of Nazis? You write,
“As for the abolitionists, it was more their burning hatred of Southrons and less their opposing slavery, as an abstract, that led their consciences. ”
Are you serious?? First of all, slavery was NOT an ‘abstract,’ and thus Anglo abolitionism was not a matter of ‘taste’ or a ‘style’. Are you trying to insult the memory and the sufferings of my family and of my ancestors? Are you that arrogant? You are suggesting that the underground railroad, and the sacrifice of John Brown’s life is merely a facile act of ‘Whites’ who are really just being self-referential and ego-centered in saving or defending Black slaves, and that it wasn’t really anything to do with those of us who were SAVED by those sacrificing ‘Whites’.
I think that’s called HUBRIS, Jimmy as well as ‘White’ megalomania on your part. If the White man who hid my grandfather over night in Alabama so that he could survive the lynch mob seeking to kill him before he could slip out of the county to make his way north back in the 30’s, was only acting out of his peeved distaste for The Klan, and that distaste has led of course to MY EXISTENCE, then I say BRAVO for ‘White’ abolitionists, and for peeved Whites in Alabama, just as Jews I’m sure were overjoyed that the Dutch hated the Nazis enough to save Jewish lives.
Apparently the Swedes too, were rather snotty towards the brutish Nazis of Germany. You may have read of Rauol Walenberg, a Swedish diplomat honored by Israel as a ‘Righteous Gentile” for his rescuing nearly a hundred thousand Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary from Hungarian fascists during World War II. Walenerg is quoted as having said, “They are scum, these fascists, and have no taste in uniforms!” Does his snobbery discount his acts of bravery and humanism?
You may also know of German businessman, Oskar Schindler, by all reports a selfish, greedy rich German businessman who eagerly worked for the Nazis using slave labor in his factories to increase his profits but who was appalled by the oafishness and the inhumanity of the German Nazi officer he worked with, and who gradually grew disgusted with the ‘final solution’ to wipe out the entire population of European Jews that he saw unfolding before him. A degenerate playboy (one reason the Nazis trusted him so much), he made a compete reversal in character and saved the lives of 1,200 Jews who were enslaved in his enamelware and ammunition factories.
Yes, ‘White’ martyrs are human and flawed (the Dutch who so bravely thwarted the Nazis later colonized South Afrika and created the racist legal segregation know as Apartheid on that continent), just like everyone else. For that matter JESUS was human and flawed, which according to Christian mythology and mysticism, was the whole point of his martyrdom, wasn’t it? God Jehovah wanted to demonstrate his love by taking human form and suffering human frailty, human agony, in order to show that love, sacrifice, and courage are all possible for human beings, and that we have an obligation to rise to a higher standard of love even though we are NOT gods?
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Mr. Rayfield,
A lot of what you wrote has merit, and should be well considered by all who are setting on the sidelines watching, reading and not participating. As well as those who do.
I am not, nor ever will be a fan of Marxism. They, Marx and Engels, wrote the Communist Manifesto. And because of this book, this philosophy, in the 20th century over 100,000,000 people were systematically murdered, victims of democide, in the Communist countries where they resided. For me, referencing the author of an unleashed bloodshed unequaled in human history is both a non-starter and non-sequitur. I therefore will not address those things.
Mentioning slavery in the abstract was clearly misunderstood by you, which is surprising given your considerable education bona fides. lincoln himself used the word “abstract” when writing about American slavery. As a way of reminding his abolitionist friends they opposed something they themselves mayhaps had never personally seen, but had only heard about. Writing to the Hon. Geo. Robertson of Lexington, Ky. he said this, “You are not a friend of slavery in the abstract.” In a letter he wrote to Joshua Speed, he said, “You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it.”
Certainly for the people who owned slaves, worked slaves and/or simply saw them, it was no abstract notion. But to those who had only heard about it, it was something abstract. Get it?
As far as personal growth is concerned, a person’s age is not of necessity an indicator of personal growth. Neither is being in agreement with one philosophy or another an indicator, in and of itself. For what if the philosophies contradict each other? Then who gets to be the referee/judge to proclaim the mature, the right? I suspect we are around the same age. You, in your sphere of influence, no doubt commands great respect. And you appear to be solidly grounded in your beliefs. And to you, human growth takes place as they grow to agree with your philosophy. What is it you people in academia call that? Ego-centric? Or even ego-maniacal?
Communisim in practice resulted in genocide on an unprecedented scale in the 20th century as the hounds of hell were unleashed. You advocate for Communism. Hhhhmmmmmm.
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@ Jimmy
As usual, no real response to anything I actually SAID. Just fixating on a detail that allows for derailing and a defensive smugness that never really engages with the ideas I expressed. OK. This blog is not about rehabilitating Jimmy, and you have the right to your obtuseness. But consider: You mention Marxism killing folks, while I was talking of Marx himself, not so much Marxism. I also mentioned Christ, but you make no mention of how CHRISTIANITY led to the slaughter of Millions more people than Marxism ever did. Hmmmmmmmmmmm!
Personally, I don’t see how we could blame Jesus for the twisted things people did in his name after his death. Marx as well. Heavy Metal music is the twisted musical genre that grew out of the beautiful electric art of Jimi Hendrix. Hey, Jimmy is not responsible for the ugliness of Motorhead.
Do you EVER look beneath the surface of anything to see to its roots and its economic, psychological or cultural sources and implications? Do you look at a cookie and see only Nabisco? You don’t see your grandmother’s beautiful, wrinkled, loving hands??
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“Do you EVER look beneath the surface of anything to see to its roots and its economic, psychological or cultural sources and implications? Do you look at a cookie and see only Nabisco? You don’t see your grandmother’s beautiful, wrinkled, loving hands??”
Sure I do. Although my grandparents are long gone. I am always looking for the beauty in things beneath the surface, as well as the surface because photography has become a passion of mine. If it were possible here, I should love to post a few examples what I see with the camera.
I am not naive, though. I see some things as they are and ask why? But I know it is beyond my capabilities to effect change. So the best I can do is to try and influence those within my circle. Not to change their minds, certainly not to your way of thinking, but to cause them to think for themselves, to rationally parse things they have taken at face value only because someone else said. I would much rather they arrive at your conclusions honestly, and on their own volition, than for them to take my word on anything thoughtlessly, with no critical thinking at all.
Thank you for your reply, Mr. Rayfield. And, by the by, I was and remain a huge Jimi Hendrix fan, and consider him head and shoulders above the rest of the rock guitarists, and as the greatest rock guitarist of all tyme.
One more thing. As an educator and professor, it surprises me you think facts unworthy components of an argument so long as the argument is sound, which is to say you are in agreement. Because to me, whenever there is an error of fact, as I had earlier exposed on a woman’s writing, the whole argument is specious. Disingenuous. It opens the door to flat out falsehoods, a tactic of many a dictatorship, a la, Lenin, Castro, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Hitler and the rest of those murderous dictatorships of the right and left.
Ever read 1984?
You should and should recommend it for all those whom you influence.
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@ Jimmy
“I see some things as they are and ask why? But I know it is beyond my capabilities to effect change.”
How sad and self defeating. You even derail yoyr SELF, eh? And that is the unbridgeable gap between you and me, Jimmy; it’s why I say so much to you and you respond to so little I’ve said. I know damn well that I CAN change the world, Jimmy, which is why I waste no time ‘asking why’? I go straight to the solution and join everybody else to put my shoulder to the whell and push along with them, where I am needed.
You say you cannot change the world. “That”, as Yoda says to the naive and hard headed young Luke Skywalker, “Is why you fail.” You have a long way to go to grow your spirit, young Jimmy. I leave you with the words of Margaret Mead, because I have no more time to waste on winding your stem only to see that your minute hand just sits there unmoving:
“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
–Margaret Mead
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@Jimmy Shirley…..
“But I know it is beyond my capabilities to effect change. So the best I can do is to try and influence those within my circle…………………………I would much rather they arrive at your conclusions honestly, and on their own volition, than for them to take my word on anything thoughtlessly, with no critical thinking at all.”
In one paragraph you admit defeat and in the same sentence talk about changing those in your own circle, which is indeed how change begins. You also completely contradict yourself as you claim you want to influence those who obviously don’t agree with you but “again” turn around and talk about wanting your friends to come to their own conclusions, if you indeed influence someone you would be taking away their own critical thinking. Most people do not debate or argue subject matter in hopes to influence others on a site such as this but instead “LISTEN” to others opinions, experiences and thoughts to gain a better insight about the subject matter in hopes to heal, better understand each other or just maybe become closer as human beings. I am not saying influence doesn’t happen, influence is a natural occurrence and does happen here but premeditated influence is a bit creepy. Influencing people is what Hitler and men like him did and many political parties to this day continue to do, influence people by trickery, double talk and outright lies. White America has had an agenda since the day after ratification to “INFLUENCE” Black men and women to act white, influence is just another word for “CONTROL”.
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@ William
Well said.
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“Africans were not selling “their own”, they were selling their enemies, just as the Greeks and Romans once did. Africa, then as now, was made up of different countries. They were no more selling “their own” than, say, “Europeans” were killing “their own” during the Holocaust.”
So what you’re saying is, black people didn’t do it to themselves. So they shouldn’t be held accountable for what someone else did to them?
But we should be, because fuck white people!
Sounds legit.
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I recommend the writings of Dr. Thomas Sowell. In particular: The Quest for Cosmic Justice, Race and Culture, and Black Rednecks and White Liberals.
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@ William the Conqueror: Comment deleted for use of moderated language.
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@ Abagond and William The C
But I sure can imagine what William said! (LOL). Bravo, William.
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Speaking in generalization ruins credibility, saying African done it too doesn’t shy away from anything other than being singled out. All races had slaves is the truth. Not to acknowledge that blacks sold blacks is racist. Saying white people think they are better cause they are white is racist and you can’t speak for whites being black. Disappointed in this article, I like historical facts. Not propaganda . What is your solution? End racism and slavery, let’s hear it.
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@Jason
News flash. Saying other did it deflects from the fact that said group did do it.
You also can’t speak for whites being white. Too often whites come in here with the idea of being white means they all of a suddenly have a psychic know of how other whites think and feel. That is false.
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@Jason…..”Speaking in generalization ruins credibility”
Completely inaccurate….generalization is simply a figure of speech and has zero to do with credibility. The average person can determine whether or not someone is generalizing and because we almost never have any accurate figures we generalize or just for the lack of a better term we generalize.
Your comment about all races sold slaves is generalizing, your comment about blacks sold blacks is generalizing. First of all Blacks did not sell blacks to America and that’s what this article is about. It’s not about Roman slaves or Jewish slaves, etc. This article is about how some whites in America like to make excuses for Americas ENORMOUS ATROCITY of slavery in a time when slavery had been deemed inhuman by most developed countries for hundreds of years. Blacks did not sell blacks, a FEW Black men in power sold prisoners to White men in ships who sailed halfway around the world to purchase or CAPTURE African men and women for the use of slavery.
Along this journey these men, women and children were beaten, raped, murdered and the most sickening thing I can think of was when they threw men and women and children into the ocean if they were sick or injured. I can’t imagine what those poor people must have gone through in their last moments of life floating in the frigid seas. Or what their loved ones still on the boat must have felt watching their child being tossed into the ocean and not being able to help and then thinking about it for days wondering what they went through…..
The whites in this country that would try to lessen the enormity of such a CRIME against HUMANITY should be utterly ashamed of themselves. Do they not know that the very Black men and women we live side by side with are the very descendants of these men and women who were murdered and tortured in this manner by the very same descendants of the whites that like to disown this atrocity by our forefathers and by allowance our GOVERNMENT, OUR COUNTRY.
Not once in the history of this sometimes murderous country has our government said to the groups of people we have wronged said “We are extremely sorry for the mistakes we have made and for the terrible abuse Blacks have suffered by the allowance of such terrible laws that let one man own and mistreat another man.” Yes Bill Clinton said it but with great controversy by the rightwing and the very whites we are speaking about. And besides Bill Clinton is just the best damn President of all time and no one is like Bill, except for Obama but Obama is half Black and I believe the apology needs to come from the entire government in unison. There should be a National Holiday to commemorate those who lost their lives, those who were raped, tortured, etc, those who are descendants of slaves and those who fought the good fight-Black and white, those who have dealt with the systemic affect of slavery-which is just about every Black American today.
These are the things this article brings to light so this has nothing to do with the very few instances where white people were slaves millennial ago and had nothing to do with America…
Generalizing whites in America at that time is not wrong as whites owned everything, they governed everyone and they had all the money. Not much has changed as even today whites own everything and Blacks are still at the bottom of the economic ladder….and before you even try to think it has anything to do with Blacks themselves let me also point out that Blacks are still the most oppressed, the most profiled, the most discriminated against, and the most hated by white hate groups (which 90% of all hate groups are white). So simple deduction explains why Black Americans have not been able to, as a whole, climb out of the oppressive mire that white America put them in and have kept them in….Psychological and legislative slavery has replaced physical slavery.
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sharinalr
Too often whites come in here with the idea of being white means they all of a suddenly have a psychic know of how other whites think and feel. That is false.
————————————————————————————————-
And thats EXACTLY why they do it. Exhibit “A” is William the Conquorer and Buudhuu; if you ask them a question like:
“what are YOU unwilling to do to replace white supremacy with justice?” they answer for everybody EXCEPT themselves;
OR,
they don’t answer at all and make you guys THINK they did by answering for OTHER white people.
See how they trick you?
They handed you a bunch of paper work, but none of it has their SIGNATURE.
When you ask a white person a question, practice the technique of forcing the white person to ANSWER FOR THEMSELVES.
Make them use that first person personal pronoun: “I”
I have not committed sin.
I have not committed robbery with violence.
I have not stolen.
I have not slain men or women.
I have not stolen food.
I have not swindled offerings.
I have not stolen from God/Goddess.
I have not told lies.
I have not carried away food.
I have not cursed.
I have not closed my ears to truth.
I have not committed adultery.
I have not made anyone cry.
I have not felt sorrow without reason.
I have not assaulted anyone.
I am not deceitful.
I have not stolen anyone’s land.
I have not been an eavesdropper.
I have not falsely accused anyone.
I have not been angry without reason.
I have not seduced anyone’s wife.
I have not polluted myself.
I have not terrorized anyone.
I have not disobeyed the Law.
I have not been exclusively angry.
I have not cursed God/Goddess.
I have not behaved with violence.
I have not caused disruption of peace.
I have not acted hastily or without thought.
I have not overstepped my boundaries of concern.
I have not exaggerated my words when speaking.
I have not worked evil.
I have not used evil thoughts, words or deeds.
I have not polluted the water.
I have not spoken angrily or arrogantly.
I have not cursed anyone in thought, word or deeds.
I have not placed myself on a pedestal.
I have not stolen what belongs to God/Goddess.
I have not stolen from or disrespected the deceased.
I have not taken food from a child.
I have not acted with insolence.
I have not destroyed property belonging to God/Goddess
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@Thwack….word.
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Why Thwack, you know the 42 negative confessions!
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Twack,
Such bullshyte!!!
“Let he who has NO sin cast the first stone!!”
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@Thwack….. if you ask them a question like:
“what are YOU unwilling to do to replace white supremacy with justice?” they answer for everybody EXCEPT themselves;
I have already explained to you why I did not answer your question; 1. you insulted me after you asked the question and 2. You left me instructions on how I should answer you.
I found the question very interesting and I would have loved to answer you but I knew that my answer would only be fodder for your insanity….Thwack if you want to ask me a question be a man and ask me one without any boyish rhetoric attached….like I have said in the midst of your rantings are some poignant questions and statements but your immaturity always puts me off or sets you up for a good dis…
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@William
Truer words were never uttered about the obnoxious manipulative double-talk Thwack seeks to pass off as honest discourse with others.
With him every third paragraph is a landmine, sentences are suspiciously like IED’s, many clauses are missiles and too many of the words he speaks are hand grenades. Unlike more overtly white supremacist Anglos and self-hating Anglo Saxon Negroes who sometimes blog here, Thwack seems at heart less a sheer racist than the un-dearly departed Thaddeus, than he is a middlebrow imp, but Thwack definitely gets off on luring people in and slyly insulting them, egging them, provoking reaction, and taunting those who react out of a feeling of ire at his insults, thus feeding him exactly what he wants (needs?): attention. Getting it somehow validates his ego complex, maybe, who knows? You are doing exactly the right thing William, by ignoring him when he insults you or twists your words, rather than reward him by responding to his pubescent agit-prop. We should all engage him when he decides to be civil, and ignore him when he acts like a trog.
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my gut is thwack has a frisson of desire for progress; however, my intuition also tells me his perspective is corroded by taking virtual residence at wp sites. who’s gonna take this one
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@Rayfield and V8driver…………….very good description of his comments and I believe this is a person who is deeply affected by the internet and all the sites he jumps in and out of, similarly what V8driver just said and I V8 nailed it when he says that Thwack takes up residence at these sites with a corroded perspective (Great synopsis)….he probably leaves once he no longer finds himself getting off on being the monkey wrench….I don’t even think he is Black, I think he might be a white guy playing an angry Black guy just to screw up our conversations….funny how these trolls always get us to fall for their crap even though we know what they are doing….well at least I fall for it….Most every one else ignores him but he knows my emotions always get the best of me…. for awhile anyway.
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Rayfield A. Waller
Exactly! He says just enough to appear serious and for the fight and then returns to his usual if you buy the bait.
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Abagond sir, that is a great subjective piece of shtako.
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Reginald
I guess because you have no real argument for it then that is your claim. Though it is a claim proven time and time again on this very blog. Not to mention other blogs and comments section.
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White people will throw any nonsense out there to avoid taking responsibility for anything.
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Two things.
Ma’am, take responsibility for what? Because you said anything. Since you are the great judge of us Whites, please go into great detail how us Whites are. After all, arent y’all the ones who maintain, rightly, that us Whites can not set in judgement of y’all?
And Mr. Waller, you mention “self hating Anglo Saxon Negroes”. First of all, you cast judgment on people, who they are, what they are all about, based on their forays here? You DO NOT KNOW their hearts so you cant say that.
Like a particular Negro Anglo Saxon I spar with on another Black forum site. He had the unrighteous audacity to tell me in voting against Ebama, I voted against my own self interests. HE KNOWS ME NOT!! He has no right to say that to me. Never have his eyes beheld me. I have my own ideas of what is best for me.
It is one thing to ingage in intellectual debate, arguing opposing ideas and ideals. Honestly held beliefs are never wrong for the individuals, shy of advocating anarchy and homicide. I disagree with a lot of what y’all say here, but NOT everything.
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@Jimmy….”…..After all, arent y’all the ones…”
In order for you to make a valid argument against someone who is generalizing you must first break yourself from generalizing.
Remember this wonderful parable and one of my favorites for so many people who vote to keep their neighborhoods poor and their economies slow and who perpetuate the inequality that continues to grow year by year in a trickle down economy….
Here is the parable; “….. friend, let me take the speck out of your eye, ‘ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
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Works both ways, doesnt it.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
May work both ways but does it make you look any less desperate?
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@Jimmy Shirley
No, Jimmy it most definitely does NOT work both ways, it is biblical parable whose intention as with ALL biblical parables is not the bullshite modern American conceit of seeking always to draw dead center, middle of the road equivalents between parties so that one need never judge GUILT. That’s what Anglo liberals and right wing Anglos (such as you) love to do, constantly drawing false equivalencies between parties with unequal power relations–such as Anglos who want to deny White supremacy by claiming that Blacks are ‘equally racist’ compared to Anglos, or men who seek to deny male supremacy by arguing that women are just as sexist toward themselves as men are toward them.
Bull.
Dig; the parable you are willfully and ignorantly trying to twist assigns GUILT. It is one of a series told by Jesus about the topic of HYPOCRISY. Jesus as he was known for doing, wanted to make the point that abusive, ugly, violent, and deadly folks were seeking to KILL, harm and falsely judge those without power. For instance his intercession against those about to stone a woman to death (“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”). Jesus saw POWER and saw VICTIMIZATION and acted against it. He denounced the Pharisees, the temple cohorts, and Rome all for the same reason: misuse of power. White supremacy is about POWER not equivalent wrongs. The slave is NOT equal to the master. Women are not inheritors of equal amounts of male privilege. Blacks do not have power, and so, as Angela Davis makes clear with her widely accepted definition of racism (‘power plus prejudice’), you cannot rationally or ethically deny the guilt of American racism by claiming a false equivalency.
Most of all, and I know you won’t take this well, Brother, but here it is: you need to stop talking off the top of your head, cracking jokes instead of mounting valid arguments, and READ SOME BOOKS. In this case, read a bible concordance or take a omparative religions course online if not on a college campus.
Your ignorance is showing and I’m getting to be embarrassed for you at this point.
Matthew 7:5 –“Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? 5″You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
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@George Ryder…He quoted scripture to respond to my comment George but Rayfield is very well read and i wouldn’t be surprised if he said he read every religious doctrine….
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Happy Thanksgiving Everyone…..thank You Rayfield, you are my hero Bro, I talk about you all the time to my family and friends and how brilliant you are, I wish i could take one of your courses, i know i would enjoy it immensely.
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Thank you George….Happy thanksgiving.
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@William;
The same to you, Brother, I talk about you as well. You are a righteous citizen. I thought it was so absurd (though I’ve unfortunately heard it before) that someone would say ‘you are agnostic so why are you commenting on scripture’ that I didn’t even bother to respond to our friend. As if agnostics cannot read. Sheesh! Being agnostic means I actually have a much DEEPER heritage of reading religious texts (texts of ALL faiths in my case, yes) than most theists do. Most theists, when you call them on their crap, are exposed as woefully ignorant about the precepts of their own (presumed) faiths.
I found myself painfully attacked during a debate with a Calvanist minister a few years ago, who had this same backwards flaw:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCRGGp68PwY)
Christianity for instance, wouldn’t you agree, William, is a wonderful philosophy as taught by Immanuel the Christ, but the problems and the bloodshed arise from his so-called ‘followers’ (beginning with the psychotic, woman-hating Paul/Saul) some of whom do evil in his name.
The SAINTS (such as Yeshua and Einstein), not the ‘religions’ are what endure and truly inspire us to be more human and larger of spirit–‘belief’and doctrine are nothing more than the frozen shadows of the prophets and saints. It seems to me as an agnostic that barely ANY religious doctrines ever survive the deaths of their founders, though mediocre, venal, manipulative, greedy pontiffs abound in the decades and centuries after the passing away of the enlightened prophets and saints (Buddha, Yeshua, Rajneesh Chandra Rohan, Sitting Bull, Ravi Shankar, Mohammed, Laotzi, Akhenaten, Confucius, Zeno, Albert Einstein, Fannie Lou Hamer, Socrates, Madam Marie Curie, George Harrison, Parshva, Martin King, Robert Kennedy, Patrick Henry, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Darwin, John Coltrane (look up the ‘Church of John Coltrane’ on Google, and be amazed!), Emma Goldman, Sojourner Truth, and my favorite saint of them all, Christopher Hitchens).
‘Prosperity Gospel,’ indeed. Whattheduck??
Happy holiday, William.
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I have a hard time “facing” something I have nothing to do with, took no part in, or have justified.
I’m sure I’ll catch hell for this but slavery was a common thing in these times, and maybe the Americas’ ran with it longer than most. Fortunately as time passes, the world is becoming more cultured and accepting. It obviously was not a great part of history but what am I, a white man, supposed to do to “face this,” as the author of this says?
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@Rayfield…..Always a pleasure Sir and I hope that this holiday season is special for you and your family and your students but more importantly I hope everyday after that is as special.
I am actually in the middle of reading the Bible again, for the third time. It has been 15 years since I last read it and much has happened since then, heck I became a registered Democrat in that time and politically active. I turn to my faith to purge some of my bad habits and to get closer to God. But that is a discussion for another time, Bless you my Friend.
@Chase….No one is asking you to feel guilty, either you do or you don’t but you should feel empathy because it is the DIRECT result of slavery and the oppression of Black people since then that a large portion of your fellow countrymen suffer while the same descendants of those slave traders live a life free of these troubles and with social privilege. I have never been made to feel guilty by any of my Black friends or bloggers, although I do and when I express this guilt, those Black people that respond always say they appreciate it but it is not necessary, I was not the perpetrator, however they sure do appreciate the understanding. It is really easy to be understanding Chase, understanding that slavery, just like the Holocaust, causes decades, sometimes centuries of hate and oppression through family blood lines. It is not hard to see the correlation between slavery and the 100 years of oppression thereafter and the social and economic conditions of so many Black communities today. The exact same conditions affect Native American communities, the other group of people who were murdered and oppressed by the white establishment of the times. During the time of slavery and the American occupation of Native lands Blacks and Native Americans sat at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, to this very day the same is true. So tell me how is it that nothing was done to help these groups of people assimilate into our society. How come no retributions were made for such human atrocities…Over 8 million Blacks murdered, tens of millions of Natives murdered, an entire country sundered, families torn apart and sold to pedophiles and land owners and so on with not one single apology, not one homestead, nothing!
America rescued Jews from the Germans and to this day send them $3.1 billion dollars a year, this and they have never done anything to Israel. America murders 8 million Blacks and 40 million Natives and not even an apology….Don’t Blacks deserve as much as Israel? Don’t Native American deserve as much as Israel? So when people say it is not about race or that slavery was a long time ago I say, “Then why is America still treating people of color differently?”
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Now wait just a darn minute, “”William the Conqueror””!
You said, “America murders 8 million Blacks and 40 million Natives and not even an apology.”
This is not a “Africans sold their own people” kind of rebuttal. This is a statement of fact. When most people around the world, and here at home, refer to “America”, they and you are referring to the United States of America, right? So when you make the claim that the United States murdered 8 million Blacks, by what do you make your claim? For one thing, since there was no United States of America, or just “America” until 1783, and the Negro, or Black population as of the 1790 census was about 760,000, wherefore do you make your claim? Are you saying that beginning 1783 until 1790, a mere 7 years, some 7,240,000 Black men, women and children were slaughtered wholesale?
As well, and presuming the Wounded Knee incident of 1890 was the last tyme US troops encountered and killed Indians, therefore in the span of 107 years, you are claiming the US government slaughtered 40 million Indians? That is over 370 000 per year.
The fact is from 1790 to 1850, the Negro population in “America” increased to some 3,600,000; to 8,8000,000 by 1900; to 15,000,000 by 1950; to 36,600,000 by Y2K.
The fact is you are attempting to place blame where it is not warranted. It was the middle passage of some 300 years that took so many lives, and it was Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, France who mainly bear nearly all of that. Only a very small percentage of blame can be cast on “America”. And only because of the legal transport of Africans for the first 20 years of our existence as allowed by the Constitution, then as well as the illegal transport afterwards.
And as far as the Indians go, again not “America’s” fault, as it was disease which the Indians had no defence against that wiped out so many of them. And yes, I know about the blankets, but that was isolated cases, not as if that and that alone killed them. And this too place way before there was an “America”.
So, sir, please stop with the twisting of facts for your own agenda.
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@Chase,
Indeed, do not feel guilty. That is a complete waste of time and mental effort.
Instead, after acknowledging this about America’s past, face it squarely, feel angry and take action.
then click on the link
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@Jimmy Shirley……”When most people around the world, and here at home, refer to “America”, they and you are referring to the United States of America, right?”
I was not aware that “my words” and “my thoughts” were governed by the rest of the world. Jimmy if you want for me to give you a geography lesson I would be glad to. You see, there is South America to the South and Central America in the middle and North America on the top, just like a 3 scoop ice cream cone. When I say America I mean America just like when you say words like, YALL you don’t actually mean something much more derogatory.
Here is but one of several accounts from a reliable source Jimmy………………
In American Holocaust (1992), David Stannard estimates that some 30 to 60 million Africans died being enslaved. He claims a 50% mortality rate among new slaves while being gathered and stored in Africa, a 10% mortality among the survivors while crossing the ocean, and another 50% mortality rate in the first “seasoning” phase of slave labor. Overall, he estimates a 75-80% mortality rate in transit.
In Slavery A World History, Milton Meltzer estimates that 10 million slaves arrived in the Americas. This would be the residue after 12.5% of those shipped out from Africa died on the ocean, 4-5% died while waiting in harbor, and 33% died during the first year of seasoning.
In “The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust” (Is the Holocaust Unique, A. Greebaum, ed., 1996), Seymour Drescher estimates that 21M were enslaved, 1700-1850, of which 7M remained in slavery inside Africa. 4M died “as a direct result of enslavement”. Of the 12M shipped to America, 15%, or 2M more, died in the Middle Passage and seasoning year.
Jan Rogozinski, A Brief History of the Caribbean (1994): “[A]s many as eight million Africans may have died in order to bring four million slaves to the Caribbean islands.”….the previous text was taken from, Lawrence Keeley’s War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (1996).
Jimmy you are really good at putting words in peoples mouths and then running on with those assumptions as if they were reality. Bottom line is that I can careless if it were 10 people murdered by AMERICA or 10 million, it was done with the explicit knowledge of this country and those white wealthy settlers prior to the Revolution. Picking it apart and delegating blame to this group and that group doesn’t lessen the EVIL that this country has bore through typical racism and white elitist arrogance.
American Indian Holocaust :
Quote from U.N. definition of Genocide…….The U.N. General Assembly adopted this term and defended it in 1946 as “….a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.” Most people tend to associate genocide with wholesale slaughter of a specific people. However, “the 1994 U.N. Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, describes genocide beyond outright murder of people as the destruction and extermination of culture.” Article II of the convention lists five categories of activity as genocidal when directed against a specific “national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”
European colonies and the newly declared United States continued similar conquests. Massacres occurred across the land such as the Wounded Knee Massacre. Not only was the method of massacre used, other methods for “Indian Removal” and “clearing” included military slaughter of tribal villages, bounties on native scalps, and biological warfare. British agents intentionally gave Tribes blankets that were intentionally contaminated with smallpox. Over 100 thousand died among the Mingo, Delaware, Shawnee and other Ohio River nations. The U.S. army followed suit and used the same method on the Plains tribal populations with similar success.
“By conservative estimates, the population of the United states prior to European contact was greater than 12 million. Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237 thousand.
Thus, according to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a”vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record.” By the end of the 19th century, writes David E. Stannard, a historian at the University of Hawaii, native Americans had undergone the”worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed, roaring across two continents non-stop for four centuries and consuming the lives of countless tens of millions of people.” In the judgment of Lenore A. Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr.,”there can be no more monumental example of sustained genocide—certainly none involving a ‘race’ of people as broad and complex as this—anywhere in the annals of human history.” – See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7302#sthash.q8exHxM8.dpuf
So regardless what numbers are correct the facts are that millions of human beings were murdered or died as a result of other human beings. Would you be so quick to disregard the Jewish Holocaust and those numbers? Wherever you get your numbers and wherever I get my numbers cannot be 100% accurate, however these events occurred at MONUMENTAL NUMBERS.
After all, it doesn’t matter if you lose the Superbowl by 30 points or 1 point, you are still a loser. Only die hard desperate people make light of the fact it was only one point.
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@William.
Nobody can argue with the detailed history and statistics you posted here, William. All they can do is either attack YOU (ad hominem) or seek to derail you with side issues of language, points about dates, or the truly hilariously stupid argument made above that The united states cannot be guilty of murdering masses of people America murdered because at the time the “United Statres” hadn’t been formally named (Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Talk about a desperate attempt to change the subject). You put a lot of time and effort into your post William, but you and I both know that certain hardcore derailers will go on doing what they do-do-do so well, it’s all they know how to do, You did, however, provide significant knowledge for those who read your post who really do want to be aware of what their own heritage as Anglos really is. I am a man, and I admit the existence of male supremacy, sexism, and misogyny (hatred and abuse of women). It’s not a question of ‘feeling guilty’ about it, women don’t need my guilt, they need my support and my commitment to oppose male supremacy with my words, my deeds, and my courage, just as you do in terms of race, William. I cannot rest easy in my advantage and privilege as a man in this culture while women are being raped, beaten, exploited, and having their rights whittled away every day by the supreme court and by rabid right wing politicians. All the babbling some Anglos do about ‘guilt’ is a dead giveaway that the point for them is not slavery or injustice or inequality or historical crimes–the point is THEM. Their own narcissism.
They need to step out of the exoskeleton of their own Anglo privilege long enough to get a clue. No person of color needs anyone to feel guilty, we need Anglos to reject White supremacy and make themselves our allies. They might start by taking a look at C-span and CNN to note that all those marches against cops killing Blacks have a whole lot of ‘White’ people right alongside the Blacks. Robert Kennedy, whose last campaign was definitely heavily influenced by Blacks around him who were his advisers and were in his protection detail spoke openly about his decision to unlike his brother Jack, reject his upbringing and his own racism to seek a full identity as an American and as a conscious enemy of White supremacy, said in the months before his death, “I’m sleeping well for the first time in months. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but at least I’m at peace with myself.”
There was never a time in this hemisphere, going all the way back to slavery, when Anglos were not struggling for the freeing of and justice for Africans in America (the Shakers, the Quakers, the Irish Whites who formed self protection brigades with Blacks whom they shared class interests with against the Southern land owners and former slave masters, Senator Charles Sumner who took to the US Senate floor to denounce slavery and was beaten nearly to death by a rabidly hateful Southern senator and was never physically the same after the vicious public attack, the Abolitionists, the followers of Patrick Henry, the founders of the underground railroad, the White women of the north who founded the “Freedman’s Relief” organizations, the sainted and martyred Anglo youths who rode down into the maw of hell in the south on buses to get their heads bashed and got tortured, shot, and killed trying to register Black citizens to vote, the Anglo civil rights marchers who stood with King in Selma, several White male Kennedy administration officials who personally faced down Klan thugs to protect cornered Blacks being attacked by White crowds, Viola Liuzzo, a sister of my home state Michigan, who was murdered by renegade FBI agents in the South where she was working for the NAACP, just for instance).
(http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/12/209595935/killed-for-taking-part-in-everybody-s-fight)
…and Robert Kennedy who was assassinated in part because he formed bonds and allegiance with Blacks during his last campaign (didn’t teach you ‘guilt’ talking Anglos about THAT in history, huh? Also didn’t ever see the photo of Bobby’s astounding Black Wall of Protection that I posted below, did you?)
Remember Patrick Henry’s words?…
“The world, in general, has denied your people a share of its honors; but the wise will ascribe to you a just tribute of virtuous praise for the practice of a train of virtues, among which your disagreement to Slavery will be principally ranked. I cannot out wish well to a people whose system imitate the example of Him whose life was perfect; and, believe me, I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish Slavery. It is equally calculated to promote moral and political good.
Would any one believe that I am master of slaves by my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I will not — I cannot justify it, however culpable my conduct. I will so far pay my devoir to Virtue, as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and to lament my want of conformity to them. I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be afforded to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we cam do, is to improve it, if It happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot, and an abhorrence of Slavery.”
History is a real kick in the head to the notion that wanting Anglos to fight injustice too is not a new notion–and it isn’t even a new role for Anglos who have been in the fight all along.
Love to you William My Brother, as always.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/06/rfk_excerpt200806
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Nobody can argue with the detailed history and statistics you posted here, William. All they can do is either attack YOU (ad hominem) or seek to derail you with side issues of language, points about dates, or the truly hilariously stupid argument made above that The united states cannot be guilty of murdering masses of people America murdered because at the time the “United Statres” hadn’t been formally named (Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Talk about a desperate attempt to change the subject)
Jimmy if you want for me to give you a geography lesson I would be glad to. You see, there is South America to the South and Central America in the middle and North America on the top, just like a 3 scoop ice cream cone. When I say America I mean America just like when you say words like, YALL you don’t actually mean something much more derogatory.
When you people here say “America” ye arent speaking of a land, for a land nor a continent can kill people. You are most definitely speaking of the United States. Cause even in your pathetic retort, you said, “masses of people America murdered”. Obviously you are peaking not of North America for then you must include Canada, Mexico and the central American countries. When you say “America” you are speaking not of South America. You know it! I know it! Everyone knows it. THUS, crimes committed by the British, the French, the Spanish – all of whom were the colonists, occupiers of this space of land which later became the nation of the United States of America – are the only ones to be held accountable. And this is not an ad hominem “attack”. It is pointing out a simple salient point – truth matters. Facts matter. Truth either matters, or it does not matter at all.
And as far as Ward Churchill goes, anyone relying on this PhD. wannabee is relying on a fool. For with him, truth matters not. Citing his statistics, when they have been shown to be either misdirected, inflated or flat out false is like relying on the neo-nazis for Holocaust statistics.
Again like I said afore. I am not blind to injustice. My own family has been subjected to it more than once. But neither does that sway me from holding myself, and others, to the high bar of truth/fact.
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@Jimmy Shirley
Pish posh, I say, Jimmy The Derailer Shirley. Pish and posh.
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@Jimmy
…Because of course you realize I don’t need to say anything–you just confirmed everything I said to William by demonstrating it in your screwy self-justifications for all the world to see (or at least the part that can read English). You clearly are under the influence of an irresistible compulsion–you are not actually writing about Africa, slavery, the United states, or anything William or I actually said; you never respond point by point to anything, never supply supporting documentation as William and I and others always do, and you never disprove anything we actually SAID, so I conclude that you are writing about the shibboleths inside your own nut–you are trapped inside your own nut, Amigo, and I don’t have my nut cracker for Christmas yet. Merry Selfmas to you, anyway.
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@Jimmy
Yet you have not provided anything to really counter what he said other than “you are a liar” and a history lesson own what is and is not considered America. So as far as anyone is really concerned truth for you is only what makes you feel good about yourself.
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On*
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George
Not “everyone” is in the argument to begin with. William made the claim and Jimmy is making the claim he is lying.
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“Not “everyone” is in the argument to begin with. William made the claim and Jimmy is making the claim he is lying.”
See? You are doing the exact same thing you accuse me of. Parsing an argument.
AND, I never said a word about “lying”. This is a typical gliberal tactic. I did argue, however, the accusations/blame are misdirected and should be directed towards the European countries responsible for bring Africans here in the first place.
This is not rocket surgery or brain science, y’all.
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Additionally, “”So as far as anyone is really concerned truth for you is only what makes you feel good about yourself.”” this is equally true for everyone.
Again, not rocket surgery or brain science.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
When I am home I will basically point to where you all but called him a liar without using the word and then I will wait for you to explain it away like you always do.
“this is equally true for everyone.”—-And tell me how everyone else doing it changes that you have paragraph proof of you doing it? As opposed to others who don’t.
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George
Another paragraph showing your inability to think and lack of basic common sense. I never said he used those exact words. Liar is the word I used to describe what his whole paragraph is basically saying to George.
Secondly I am not sure where you pulled the I quoted him out of your behind because I see not one quotation mark to indicate such.
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@Jimmy and George….So what I am understanding is, Jimmy can take my words to mean something else but when Sharinalr points out Jimmy’s words, that clearly say that I am lying to mean something else it doesn’t work. We are used to seeing such double standards but lets be fair, I said America, meaning white men who settled here from the day Columbus sailed the racist ocean blue. Jimmy had a chance to talk about my entire post, such as; genocide, atrocities against human beings, empathy, etc….and all he could do is try to derail our conversation by pointing out that my numbers of human beings killed as a result of slavery was not correct, knowing that the exact numbers will never be known. I stated where my numbers came from on my second post, where did Jimmy get his numbers?
I am so sorry Jimmy, I did not know that there were different levels of slaughter. So what Jimmy is saying is that not all serial killers are bad people. While one serial killer may have killed 40 children, the serial killer who only killed, raped, hung, burned alive, beat, starved, threw into the ocean, 10 children is not that bad of a guy, after all maybe he use to tithe at Church…
Jimmy haven’t you learned your lesson yet?
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@George Ryder
Then I stand correct there are quotation marks, but that is not me quoting him dear. I think it is time you start getting those brain cells turning.
Let me explain this very slowly for you.
Those are my words to describe what he is doing. The quotation marks are used to put emphasis on it. Not to quote him.
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/quotes_for_emphasis.html
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@Rayfield, Sharinalr…..Love to you as well….
We’re going to change this world and bring equality to the people and areas where it is most needed, it is just going to take some time to weed out the haters.
Yes Jimmy this white boy said haters…
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@Jimmy
Here we go.
“When you people here say “America” ye arent speaking of a land, for a land nor a continent can kill people. You are most definitely speaking of the United States. Cause even in your pathetic retort, you said, “masses of people America murdered”. Obviously you are peaking not of North America for then you must include Canada, Mexico and the central American countries.”—-Here you are basically calling him a liar because you felt that his use of America was wrong and he was lying about what he meant. What he meant based solely on what you believe people should mean or how people should think.
This one I decided to just provide the link because frankly way too much to quote (https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/#comment-269539)
That whole comment was you telling him he is lying about 8 million blacks and 40 million natives based solely on how you choose to define America and when you feel it should be defined as such. It is basically my way is right and because I view your way as solely wrong your whole argument is a lie.
“So, sir, please stop with the twisting of facts for your own agenda.”—-You do realize if a person is twisting facts then you are telling them they are as good as lying, right?
I personally am all for looking at information objectively but if you are not providing a source and just telling someone they are wrong or ‘lying’ then really it just sounds like a lot of talking.
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@Abagond, please give me some leeway with this post, I thought about it during our above debating.
I would like to share a poem of sorts I read this morning before coming to the site:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of Angels, but have not Love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but have not Love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have,and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not Love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; Love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on it’s own way; it is not irritable or resentful: IT DOES NOT REJOICE AT WRONG, BUT REJOICES IN THE RIGHT. Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge , it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is LOVE.
This was for all the people who demonize the least of us, the sickest of us, the poorest of us, the suffering, the suffered, the most oppressed, this is for those who preach one way to certain people but spew judgement and hate with others. This is for the Hypocrite on Sunday who turns into the racist on Mondays….
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@George…. thank you for your constant fairness. it’s very welcoming, I am definitely bias so it’s nice when someone who is always moderate confirms your words.
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@William the Conqueror
He is not being fair, but being strategic. He is all for telling you kudos on your own definition now yet he is mad because I used quotation marks a way he deems unacceptable.
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@George Ryder
ROFL. You are pitiful. You ignore your ad hominems just to point out another persons ad hominems. I don’t know that is worse. This display, the other displays, or that display you attempted on the Ferguson II thread.
I tell you what. Because I am in the spirit of giving, I will give you this link to the definition of Ad hominem (spoiler alert* it is not simply just name calling).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad%20hominem
Now go pout about the emphasis quotation marks. 🙂
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@George Ryder
You really need help. An answer was given to the “contentions” made. *SMH*
“where did i attack anyone on this thread or Ferguson II”—-Do you mind rereading the sentence and realize I never said anything about you attacking? I said display dear. I also said other threads.
“what ad hominems of my own have i ignored on the threads you mentioned?”—-Oh wow I guess when you called me the b-word and abagond had to delete it did not exist. I guess when abagond told you that you will be banned if you use it again is also a source of you ignoring. You have several posts of this. Every argument where I dispute you on something ends with you calling a name or insulting me and then it goes back and forth until one of us just stops. Amnesia?
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You are a very vindictive person. You get mad about petty things and your goal becomes let me follow them and trip them up on something. I have to get them. You really need to find a better way to channel your anger instead of looking for little arguments to carry over. The simple thing I said to you here has lead all up to this.
I am almost curious on what you reaction will be if I decide to ignore you. Which I think I should just do.
Good day George.
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@George Ryder
SMH.
“my display was instigated by you & your white woman’s tears comment, & i’d rather leave it in the past, water under the bridge.”—That is one of your many displays George. See how quick you choose one that makes you less culpable? Even in that argument I was not talking to you yet you went ham which resulted in it being an argument to begin with. If I can manipulated you to act in such a manner then I am either very gifted or you have anger issues. In the Ferguson II you tried to get me to respond to you by using a question you felt would inflame the situation. I ignored which is why you had no anger to ride on. Here we are now with a simple replay to you about what I saw that you turned into an attack of you. So that common denominator in all this seems to be nothing more than you. Whether it be a failed understanding on your part or your anger.
“self admitted liar”—Yet I never admitted to being a liar in the sense that you are using it, but lying about not speaking to you anymore (another post that is an example of your ad hominems). You have no real argument or point at all so you fill most of what you say with an insult.
“the only ad hominems i see on this particular thread are coming from you.”—-That is great but it has already been established that you don’t know what an ad hominem is. So far it appears to be a word you use to appear knowledgeable. You can’t have an ad hominem if there is no debate or argument that has something to dispute.
What I am doing with you is simply calling you names because you have not presented anything that requires a debate.
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@George Ryder
Congratulations. You have added another ad hominem under your belt.
Well atleast you allowed me to prove how well you don’t see. 🙂
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I have to say guys, Jimmy did exactly what he intended to do or what his unconscious self, intended to do. He was able to deflect our discussion away from the murderous “Manifest Destiny” of one group of human beings over another and get us arguing over semantics. After all once you’ve murdered 100,000 people do you even keep counting?
Numbers? How can we ever know how many men, women and children were murdered by white men who came to this continent 400 years ago?
Christopher Columbus, the man we all grew up admiring for his bumbling voyage was the biggest murderer of all. His small army went on a rampage, literally attempting to eradicate the local population like a crop duster to a horde of locust. We actually have a National Holiday for a MASS MURDERER, what kind of fucked up shit is that? Hero my ass, he was a psychotic failure and a killer of families.
The numbers and the history books we USED to know to be fact are all skewed to make murderers look like saints. The very men who kept logs of their slaves are the men we trust to tell us how many they beat to death, starved, threw overboard, hung, etc.. Thats like letting a murderer judge his own trial. There is no possible way that the same men who owned slaves, raped slaves, hung slaves, are going to report these events correctly. And if they didn’t there was no one to question their numbers or actions. These same very men were responsible for writing the history books. The very books that talk about the Hero Christopher Columbus, who had to fight off savage Indians and save all the “virtuous white maidens” (yeah right). Only after journals, articles and other secret literature from good people did many of the facts come together. So if anything about the numbers are wrong it is that they are underestimated.
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@George Ryder
You don’t have to debate me, because I am debating you or arguing you by presenting a claim contrary to what you are saying. For example you stated one situation where you claimed to be the victim of me. I elaborated on that and your response was to call a name. That is ad hominem because you are ignoring a documented fact to simply call a petty name. Abusive ad hominem to be correct. “An Abusive Ad Hominem occurs when an attack on the character or other irrelevant personal qualities of the opposition—such as appearance—is offered as evidence against their position. Such attacks are often effective distractions (“red herrings”), because the opponents feel it necessary to defend themselves, thus being distracted from the topic of the debate”
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html
Also you are not declaring a fact. You are declaring what you decided to call me once I decided to respond to you after I said I would not. That does not make me a general liar, but I wonder what it makes you for trying to manipulate a situation into something it is not? hmmmm….
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Yeah George. Keep making it up as you go. You are a victim of me. I am the reason you have anger issues. I am the reason you are obtuse. Blah Blah blah blah
Good night dude.
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^ SMH
I would debate you are losing it, but what type of debate will that be if you are just displaying it. You should really get some rest.
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@ George
“the debate “only you” are participating in.”—-You are the one responding to me so it is quite obvious I am not participating in it myself.
Oh and George if the goals have changed then it is a matter of you changing them. I have only addressed what you said (throw in a few insults here and there). Nothing more and nothing less. Perhaps you should start taking your beef up with yourself, but then again we just can’t have you taking responsibility for anything now can we.
Again Goodnight. 🙂
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I deleted some comments between George and Sharina where they seem to do little more than trade insults.
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Why Slavery is Also White People’s Burden:
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2013/11/how_to_talk_to_white_people_about_slavery.html
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@William the Conqueror
I don’t want to blame all that on Jimmy. It is more on a history between me and George that is just sour.
At any rate I do believe many numbers are skewed as is history itself. I have to ask how much is actually accurate.
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@ Rayfield
Thank you for the link. I will read and respond later.
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ad hominem
[ad hom-uh-nuh m -nem, ahd‐]
adjective
1. appealing to one’s prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one’s intellect or reason.
2. attacking an opponent’s character rather than answering his argument.
Just in case you users of this word knows not what it really means. Because from what I have been getting in responce from most if not all of you people here, I have been the recipient of such and not the one on the attack.
Disagreement does not = ad hominem.
Also, lets just play the game you people here play. Y’all say “”America”” is responsible. OK, Now what?
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Jimmy
The definition of the word has already been established. You can save “you are the one being attacked” nonsense. You came at William. He responded in detail at that. You used number 1 of the definition in many of your responses. So frankly please turn left at the victim pity party.
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Anyone else want to pull up a definition of a word and ignore how it applies to them?
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@ William and Sharina:
Sorry for the length of this post, but as I meant to write a few lines, more thoughts kept coming and I ultimately found I am very angry about how Sharina is being treated and I want to say something about it.
You guys should by all means continue to make Jimmy (and others) accountable for his absurdities, but be aware that he is a very skilled trickster and you keep falling into his trick bag. He, like many guilty Whites (he claims he has no reason to feel guilt but it emanates from his every word and denial) he must constantly project himself as a VICTIM (of you two, of me, of anyone who challenges the guilt he pretends not to feel but it is obvious he does, even if only subconsciously because he put so much time and energy into changing the subject to trivial issues of language and detail whenever a real debate gets going about actual historical events, their causes, and their effects and particularly those who have committed historical crimes).
Remember that the whole method he uses, whether consciously or not, is the transference of guilt to those he argues with, trying to trick them into defending them SELVES, because he must remake himself as the true ‘victim’ in the face of all our critiques. He interposes himself deliberately between us and the history we seek to interrogate in order to protect the ‘innocence’ of that history and of those criminals in that history who committed obvious crimes against humanity. He ADMITS that he cannot counter the data and references of history you guys objectively present, but then changes the subject to himself–thus I wished him ‘Merry Selfmas’. LOL.
ALL people who deny history do this. Men who abuse women as well as men who deny that other men have done it use this same tactic discursively (Bill Cosby is a great example where many men and women too are denying that a man they so closely identify with may actually be a horrific abuser of women) as a rhetorical tool to maintain denial (realistically, Jimmy and those who argue points and issues in the crafty way he does are NOT of course guilty of slave trading or owning slaves or raping and killing millions of natives, but like men who are apologists for men who beat, rape, and kill women, he IDENTIFIES with those who historically have DONE these things and not with the victims, so he makes his SELF the victim rhetorically, deflecting any real analysis and critiques of this overwhelmingly brutal history. Don’t let him get away with it.
I many years ago when I was younger and more active as a global scholar, lectured in Berlin, Germany, on some academic subject or other, and while socializing afterwards I was deeply disturbed and surprised to find that among the older generations of Germans, many of whom were not even grown when WWII and Nazi atrocities took place and so I assumed were not guilty of them, I encountered many who displayed a constant rhetorical dodge going on in their conversations with me about how the German people were the ‘victims’ of WWII. From their perspective a beautiful Berlin (as well as wonderful Dresden) was destroyed, German culture was dragged through the mud, Hitler was at fault, not Germany (by the way, many of them repeated an odd little sophist argument that after Hitler Germany was no longer really the real Germany of Schiller and Hegel and Mozart–‘Nicht mehr das Deutschland von Schiller!’ they would lament, but was a NAZI nation of Hitler’s creation, so Germany didn’t commit any of the crimes). Sound familiar?
According to this delusional claim of German victim-hood, the Russians had horribly brutalized Germany, and the German army was misused by the Nazis, and of course the allies were hypocrites to ‘victimize’ the German politicians, military officers, and industrialists condemned at the Nuremberg tribunals. “What about the Jews who betrayed their own people to the Nazi’s, you know–the collaborators?”
I would respond that the Jewish victims lived under the reality that GERMANY dispossessed, brutalized, murdered, and terrorized them regardless of their citizenship and their humanity–a minority of mostly middle class, only marginally self-identifying Jews who’d grown up feeling German as much as Jewish, were of course terrorized into having to collaborate for survival or felt the need to distance themselves from the terror all around them. Sound familiar? MANY historical victims of holocausts (those often traumatized or simply driven by pragmatism into betraying their own because the circumstances that are exploited and straight out created by their victimizers drive them to it).
“What about The Native Americans!?” one woman from Frankfurt demanded of me, “You yourself, you Schwartzen, you were massacred by White America, so what gave the Americans who ran the Nuremberg tribunals the right to judge Germans?” To which I would reply, all these empty synagogues here in Berlin that you turned into museums with no Jews in them, gave them at least a historical right even if not a moral right, and the destruction of Stalingrad gave the Russians the right to invade, though not the right to rape German women, but you surely all knew it was coming due to the demons Germany released from the Russian psyche with the TOTAL WAR–‘blitzkrieg’ you unleashed against Russian civilians, and due to various German war crimes in Russia.”
These were responses the Germans I argued with did not appreciate and would simply incorporate into their trick bag, accusing me of ‘insulting’ them with such talk, and being “an un-appreciating guest (undankbare Gast)” who wanted to apologize for White Americans who raped my grandmother. Whew! Like the alligator saying “the crocodile ate babies a long time before I started eating orphans!” Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Now, the younger Germans I met did not swallow this from their parents and grand parents for a MINUTE–they REJECTED this foolishness (one reason to be hopeful, I decided, about the younger generations, such as the youth here in America now, who dismiss homophobia, are progressive about race, and who began the first real political movement for justice since the 1980’s–the OCCUPY Movement). As always I will argue with my last breath that not ALL Anglos are wasting time and derailing critique by hanging on to ‘useless guilt’ as James Baldwin called this White baggage, preventing SOME Whites from doing what must be done:
1. Rejecting the legitimacy of American ‘Manifest Destiny’ and so-called American moral authority,
2. Getting the courage needed to challenge injustice in a loud, strong voice,
3, Working hand-in-hand with women, natives, coloreds and other conscious Anglos to put wealth and power into the hands of the majority and to refuse to give their cooperation to the minority in the ruling classes,
4. banishing their own ignorance about history by studying it honestly, and then radically interrogating all who insist on continuing to repeat the lies of American propaganda.
The way Jimmy keeps baiting Sharina is particularly heinous and shameful, as well as being implicitly misogynous; he repeatedly ignores her points while focusing on minutia and details in her analyses in order to drown out her voice and incrementally de-legitimize her obviously justified, accurate, and nuanced critiques. This is a classic misogynist tactic functioning to render women voiceless by removing the topic and subject of a woman’s pronouncements and concentrating on her tone, her word choice, and her last response TO the man rather than her FIRST claim made for her own THESIS’ sake.
Ultimately, the whole focus is taken OFF of her original claims, her thesis, or her propositions with no regard anymore for the nuances of her analysis in order to remake the entire debate, conversation, or exchange as a discourse focusing on the MAN and how SHE is ‘victimizing’ HIM (Jimmy’s liberal theft of my term, ‘ad hominem’, which HE originally was guilty of in order to use it to accuse others of doing this to HIM is the perfect example–you know the old adage about the wife beater: as he beats his wife he shouts at her, ‘why are you doing this to me!’, and in Jimmy’s case he is not the wife beater, certainly, he is not even all that bad a guy, BUT he stands behind the wife beater shouting at the woman, ‘Why are you making him have to do this to you!’)
Don’t let him comfortably trick you into his bag.
Chris Rock recently did a great analysis of this tactic in a VULTURE interview he did. See below:
http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html
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@Rayfield
Thanks for your words and thank you for the link. Though at times I feel I can most certainly get myself in trouble. 😉
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@ George
I am moderating your comments because you continue to insult Sharina after deleting a bunch of your comments.
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@George…….”but William i have a question for clarity’s sake. do you think the US government is responsible for the deaths of 8 million blacks & 40 million natives? i wonder who has compiled statistics on that & how reliable the numbers actually are.
i think the USA is the “America” Jimmy thought you were referring to.”
George, I love my country as well as anyone else but I will not pretend that we have not committed atrocities and that those atrocities are directly responsible for the economic and social conditions those we have done wrong are in today. I will not be a hypocrite, I will not be in denial, I will speak for mankind as well as Amerikind. I applaud all the great things we have done and the great things we will do but if we do not recognize what we did in our past, whom we did it to and make amends with those we have hurt then it will be really easy for us to commit them again or to ignore current atrocities.
To answer your question George; No, I do not hold the U.S. government responsible for “all” the killings/deaths. I guess I should have used exact words but like I said, the light skin conquerors who settled here, explored here, etc, etc are responsible for some and the U.S. is responsible for the rest as they found the actions of men before them acceptable and continued on with the SLAUGHTER. But lets think about who formed the U.S….the very men, women and children that were here from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, before the U.S. became a country. so when I say America and 400 years in the same sentence it is extremely hard to argue that the men in America prior to the revolution and after we became the U.S. are different people altogether….which is basically what Jimmy is saying if you follow his argument.
Not all white men were evil in 1600 or 1800 or 2000, that is a fact. If it weren’t for a large portion of Anglo people opposing such treatment of others we might still be committing those same offenses. It took the unbelievable courage from those being tortured and of those whites who disagreed with their fellow family and friends about the morality and sin of what they were doing to slowly put a stop to such atrocities.
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William the Conqueror:
“If it weren’t for a large portion of Anglo people opposing such treatment of others we might still be committing those same offenses.”
WC, I call that the ‘white-savior industrial complex’.
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@Michael Cooper….”COOP”!
Michael I only added that because I am extremely hard on white people in most of my post, and the white people I speak of earned every ounce of my ire but if you had to rely on me for all of your history and knowledge of white people you would think not a single one of them was truly a good human being, that is obviously not the case. After all, look at me….he-he-he.
Sometimes I do sympathize with Jimmy, please Rayfield and Sharinalr do not get mad at me. Not his comments but where he is coming from. He has pride and love for his country and our countries history, I get that. No one wants someone to tell them their country condoned genocide, murder and slavery. No one who is white likes to hear how brutal their forefathers were, especially if all you have seen is tolerance and acceptance in your life. So even though Jimmy says lots of racist things and he gets angry at a lot of what we talk about or specific things we say….I have to say I understand why he does it and I don’t believe it necessarily has to do with hate but more of a defensive response.
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Rayfield, I just now read your previous post for Sharinalr and myself after I wrote my last post about Jimmy so please do not think it was a response to your beautifully elaborate letter on the definition of Jimmy’s actions and the lovely account of your time in Germany…Bravo my Friend, Bravo…I will do my best not to allow myself to be baited anymore.
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@William the Conqueror
I think we definitely should take Rayfield’s advice and not allow for people like Jimmy bait us, but I really have to wonder about the mental capacity of such individuals. Particularly since Jimmy claimed he was going to leave several posts up. It is just strange to me that he returns and just goes after someone he claims to be a liar and then when you do respond to him he retorts with “others do it to”. I think it is just weird.
I am not mad at you in the slightest for sympathizing with Jimmy. It is ok to feel sorry for people like him and even want to help him. I honestly believe that is part of the reason you continue to respond to him, because you want to help him understand. That is ok.
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2. attacking an opponent’s character rather than answering his argument
In your case the two are intertwined. Folks, ad hominem away!
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I’m sure this won’t make it onto your comment section, but whatever. It was proven in the early 80s by a team of Chinese anthropologists that the African Negros frontal lobes of the brain were considerably smaller and less developed than the other races on the planet. This explains why despite having a continent rich in natural resources they have never been able to develop and maintain any, ANY society or civilization that is not riddled with chaos and corruption, unlawfulness, with those few keeping all the food, etc. The African Negro never harnessed an animal for work or transportation, never developed a written language, never surpassed the stone-age, and never even possessed a freakin’ wheel for a simple cart to transport harvested crops. Oh, but wait. Until whites showed up in Africa there was never any form of farm or crop cultivation. The name of the country escapes me at the moment, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the one FORMERLY called the bread basket of Africa? That’s because European settlers developed farms and grew various grain crops. Well, when American black activists pissed and moaned about how unfair it was that these farms were owned by whites, the joke of a government went in and seized these farms, giving them to native citizens. Now I’m sure you know what happened. The farms fell into ruin and the bread basket became just another African country with all the same ills. It’s sad that Africans have lower IQs, are emotionally stunted, and the males making up maybe 7% of the U.S. population are responsible for the overwhelming amount of rapes, murders, and other violent crimes. An African-American is simply a domesticated savage.
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@Daniel
I like a good fantasy on occasion, so why wouldn’t it make it on this thread.
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@ Daniel
That is not even true. For example:
and more generally:
What you wrote is a piece of cultivated ignorance that Westerners use to excuse their own crimes against humanity. That is why you wrote it on this thread even though it is not about the intelligence of Blacks.
If you can judge all Blacks based on Zimbabwe, then I can judge all Whites based on Nazi Germany. Therefore, by your own logic, Whites are far more evil and violent than Blacks.
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@daniel: From reading your idiotic post it is you with the small brain and undeveloped frontal lobes.
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@Daniel…….Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. You are in the wrong room friend, you should be in one of the 2000 white hate blogs that litter the internet. The people in this room dwarf your feeble mind and before you get your feelings hurt I would leave while your words have put you way behind.
The simple fact of the matter is that the African continent, much like the American continent, prior to the intervention of the white plague or the white colonialism parasites, was a culture where people lived in harmony with the land and each other. Never taking more than they needed, never destroying the very life supplying environment surrounding them. Only white colonialism is responsible for the illogical destruction and poisoning of the very resources that we rely on.
So to say one culture is better than the other in this instance is stupid on your part. You are saying that the African culture, which survived for tens of thousands of years with no problem, failed at assimilating to a illogical destruction and money worshiping society. Well it is only logical that the white colonialism is the loser in this debate.
Since the intervention of white money worshiping, environment destroying system we have acid rain, lead laced fish, cancerous air supplies, radiated soil and the replacement of morality with MONEY. We have white genocide on every continent and yet there is not one single instance of Blacks or people of color committing genocide on whites, who is the more enlightened society? Who is the more moral? Did Africans fail at doing things the white mans way, your damn right they did, they have been successfully surviving for a millennial doing it the more successful way…If it ain’t broken why fix it? You yourself have been taught that if you aren’t doing things the white way then it is the wrong way, SAYS WHO? White people? Of course you are going to have a white opinion your part of a white superiority world, surrounding by so much ignorance you actually believe your own bullshit.
Which culture has proven to be the smarter, more tolerant, moral and with a sustainable culture? By far it is the African and Native cultures you mock with your feeble ability to see beyond your hate and white bread world.
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@Abagond….. “Therefore, by your own logic, Whites are far more evil and violent than Blacks.”
As a white man I can definitely guarantee that the white race has been the most destructive, most evil race of all over the last 1000 years.
Daniel is basing his opinion on TV and fellow racist, it has no foundation in FACT.
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@Sharinalr…..I feel you girl. It’s just that sometimes I hear in some of his comments, some logic and empathy, albeit very little, but enough to see him as more defensive than hateful, like many others we have encountered here, like this Daniel character. I can’t even remember their names.
Don’t ever think for a second I am not on your side on these issues, I just like to call things out when i see them or feel them, I’m not always right about these things but like to throw them out there to see if others feel the same way or if it’s just me. I think I would have made a bitchin Hippy….
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@William
I don’t want you to feel like you have to be on a side. If that is what you see and how you feel then it is not my place to tell you otherwise. Though I still think some of these cats are not working with a full deck of cards.
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@Daniel….”It’s sad that Africans have lower IQs, are emotionally stunted, and the males making up maybe 7% of the U.S. population are responsible for the overwhelming amount of rapes, murders, and other violent crimes.”
Just to prove how ignorant you are I thought I would provide you with the actual numbers of RAPES committed in this country last year.
White men were convicted of raping 32,500 times.
Black men were convicted of raping 22,500 times.
White men were convicted of other sexual assaults (molestation) 44,100 times.
Black men were convicted of other sexual assaults (molestation)17,200 times.
Now we know for a fact that a mans skin color cannot determine whether if he is a murderer or not, if that were true there wouldn’t be Black presidents, Black scholars, business owners, Ministers, etc. They would all be killers, rapist, etc. What is the difference between Black men who commit crimes and those who don’t? Experiences in life, their Mother and Father, their environment, etc..This holds true for almost every single human being on the planet. Now lets look at the experiences of the white man and the Black man over the last 200 years in this country. The white man has had ZERO amounts of oppression from another group of human beings, they have had free range and allowed to roam wherever they wanted to, to be or not to be anything they wanted. The Black man has been systematically oppressed by a system that enslaved him, killed him, raped his wife and daughters, sold his family, etc. The word PTSD comes to mind. The white man had all the education he wanted or could afford. The Black man was not ALLOWED to educate himself until just a mere 150 years ago, the white man has had over 1000 years of education in regards to modern math, English, philosophy, etc. Blacks have only recently been considered EQUAL under the law for the last 50 years. Up until the civil rights legislation was passed it was still illegal in many places for Blacks to go to public school, work in white areas or visit anywhere outside the Black community. They were confined to a small, impoverished area, just where the white man wanted him to stay. It was a 400 years journey getting to the civil rights laws and now many whites expect Blacks to catch up and join the crowd in a short 50 year period after they have been abused for so long. They want them to turn 400 years of poverty into the capitalist utopia they have wet dreams about, not only in a mere 50 years but with continued obstruction, discrimination and BRUTALITY.
Now the Black community has been the poorest of communities since the day they were Bought and paid for by whites. Of course slaves are going to be penniless but this was the foundation of the Black communities of today and sure enough with the monumental amounts of discrimination, oppression and history the black community still sits at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Below are numbers from some of the most intelligent social and economic scholars we have who have come up with a system for determining by percentage how poverty affects crime rates. The numbers are exactly what I thought they would be, poverty has a HUGE affect on crime. Being that the Black community suffers from so much poverty, it is only obvious we will see higher rates of crime and the same holds true for poor white areas. Blacks have a 14% higher poverty rate than whites. So due to poverty you can expect to see a 28% increase in crime by the Black community. Subtract this 28% and almost every category in crime is dead even across the board. After all crime was extremely rare in the African communities prior to white guilt and white capitalism was forced upon them. Only after the introduction of a philosophy that places financial gain over human interaction and brotherhood did crime become so prevalent and dominates today.
“The estimated coefficient of poverty now yields crime-poverty elasticity. The (Total Crime) model shows that holding the other variables constant, a 1% increase in poverty leads to a 2.16% increase in total crime.”
here are two of the sites i used for my numbers…
Click to access p11.pdf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/poverty-rates-higher-for-blacks-and-hispanics-than-whites-and-asians/2013/02/20/401e6a6e-7b78-11e2-9a75-dab0201670da_story.html
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@Jimmy
Looking back over the last thirty or so posts here, Jimmy, I see that I unfairly leaned on you a bit too much. I apologize for that, I was not paying close enough attention to the sequence of posts. It was not only you whom I saw disrespecting Sharina, it was also George, and maybe one other commentator in addition to you–you do not deserve to take all the blame.
Though aside from the issue of disrespecting Sharina’s legitimate point of view, her voice, and her arguments, I am not backing down one bit from my criticism of your specific tactic of shifting blame, seizing victim-hood, and changing the subject in answer to people who argue substantive material data that you refuse to actually respond to as you jockey to keep the focus of debate on your self. And you do owe Sharina an apology, though she is evidently too big of character to care if you offer one or not, because she sees beyond you. I am not simply playing the ‘noble man’ here, and being chivalrous (two offensive tropes that are just the other side of the coin of sexism because ‘chivalry’ is usually patronizing). I am actually simply saying I think she is one of us, she frequently makes observations that matter, and much as you do with William, you duck and dodge and bait her instead of responding.
So, not presuming to speak for her or William, I’m just saying that MY thought is that you yourself ought to be big enough to admit that all of us and you too, are partners in debate on this site, and that what you do in debate is unsound, and admit to her that you have been undervaluing her arguments.
Just saying.
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I read your post and you make a sound argument.
I respectfully disagree, though.
I am astounded that you people here take the position that facts dont matter. That the higher issue trumps fact. Such as my contention that when the word “America” is used it only refers to these United States of America. And that when anyone is called “an American” they only refer to citisens of these United States of America. And my contending that since the United States did not exist until 1783, and afore that, these were French, Spanish and British colonies, we as a nation to-day can not be held liable for what happened before our watch.
I am astounded by y’alls refusal to be fair. Because to me this is fair. No more are Americans responsible for what the Spanish did to the Aztecs, the Inca and/or any other Indian tribe not directly affected by the United States government, neither are we responsible for pre-1783. I am dismayed you people here either can not see this, or see it but refuse to acknowledge this probably because of racial pride.
Now, since it is perceived, wrongly, that I was disrespecting Sharina, in the interest of good manners and breeding, I apologise to all here.
But I wish to continue to hold all to the high bar of being factual.
Just like the Michael Brown case. Facts seem not to matter to you people here and around the country. What matters to you is only that a White cop shot and killed an unarmed Black boy. Never mind that had the boy complied with the officer from the very getgo, nothing else would have happened except for another arrest. Things would not have spiraled out of control. Never mind the fact that Brown charged at the cop, obviously intent on causing harm to the cop, if not gaining his weapon and killing the cop. How would you people around the country have responded to that, eh? I can tell you. Not at all, because it would not make the news, excepting locally. Another cop killed in the line of duty.
Eric Garner is pretty much the same. Had he complied with the arresting cops from the start, he mighten would yet be alive. I say it like that because given his medical condition, he mighten could still have suffered a heart attack due to the stress.
The only outrage I share with you is the senseless killing of the 12 year olde boy, Tamir Rice. ONLY here do I see a real example of a cop gone wrong. No way should the cop have cleared leather. Tamir was a BOY, for God’s sake!!! Only here should the cop be tried, convicted, cast into prison until his execution, preferably by hanging. And not with the eight foot drop, but by pulling him up until dead.
So again, I apologise IF anyone was offended, but I still hold the facts are integral to the integrity of one’s argument.
Thank you
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@
What I don’t understand about the Garner case was the need for arrest in the first place. If someone is selling cigarettes without charging sales tax, isn’t such an infraction usually counter with fines and penalties? In what universe would that result in a chokehold and a dogpile of blue uniforms?
As for the idea of resisting arrest: shouldn’t that policy also be taken in levels of severity? I mean, if a suspect failed to comply immediately, with childlike and servile alacrity to the commands of the police that is quite different then if he picks up stick and starts swinging it at them and shouting his own commands.
One can probably be solved by further dialog and the other may not. In any case, lake of an immediate “Yes Sir” should not be seen as “resisting” actively or violently.
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In what universe would that result in a chokehold and a dogpile of blue uniforms?
Jimmy L. Shirley Jr’s!!
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
For starters you can stop saying “you people”. Many have not shared with you what they believe and don’t. You assume. IF that is what “America” means to Williams then I will not tell him otherwise and so far you have not presented a source that says his way is wrong. So far it is just your opinion of it being wrong not a fact of it being wrong. YOU are confusing your opinion with fact. Which is ok until you start telling people there is wrong because yours is now a fact.
“Never mind the fact that Brown charged at the cop, obviously intent on causing harm to the cop, if not gaining his weapon and killing the cop.”—-That is also not a fact, but see how you go with it. Most if not all the witnesses stated that he stepped forward (in a walking manner for some and in a manner of getting ready for the final walk). Most people are not aware of this because of instead of reading the witness transcripts they allowed the news to tell the what is what.
I hope at the end of the day when you say you people you mean those whites, Asians, Palestinians, and etc. that support such movements.
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I would like to add some clarity to some statements that were completely false or presumed to be one thing but are actually another. Some people have made comments about Africa and African people having a higher propensity for crime than the U.S., however this is almost completely incorrect.
Of the 56 countries on or of the continent of Africa, 49 of them have a lower crime rate than the United States of America. The U.S. would sit at number 8 of the top 56 most dangerous and crime ridden countries if it were located on the continent of Africa.
Just saying….
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Jimmy L Shirley Jr said:
I am astounded at how some people can see that Eric Garner video and see no wrong, blaming him, not the police, for his death. Maybe for them a higher issue trumps facts.
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Jimmy Shirley
Here are some examples of the COPS being the STAND UP HEROES we know them to ACTUALLY be…
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnpT6GLk6a0)
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/videotape-police/
http://benswann.com/video-chicago-cops-caught-brutalizing-woman-says-youll-be-dead-your-family-will-be-dead/
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95475&page=1
https://danieltowsey.wordpress.com/tag/nypd-beat-mans-legs-w-baton-for-not-getting-up/
http://changefromwithin.org/2012/07/18/talking-privilegewaking-white-people-up-to-police-brutality/
If you watched just a few examples of these “HERO” cops you will see what goes on out there every single day in these communities, mostly our most impoverished communities policed by racist cops. I could have actually copied and pasted over 100’s of these videos or articles, over 22 internet pages of videos catching police brutalizing people in handcuffs, 90 pound women, 61 year old men just walking down the street while two white guys just robbed a liquor store, etc…Almost every case the police officer LIED about the events and in every case the cop tried to obstruct the person video taping or in one instance the one brutalizing COP told another COP to turn off the dash cam of his vehicle…What a STAIN on the Human race these COWARDS are.
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@ King:
You said, “What I don’t understand about the Garner case was the need for arrest in the first place. If someone is selling cigarettes without charging sales tax, isn’t such an infraction usually counter with fines and penalties? In what universe would that result in a chokehold and a dogpile of blue uniforms?
As for the idea of resisting arrest: shouldn’t that policy also be taken in levels of severity? I mean, if a suspect failed to comply immediately, with childlike and servile alacrity to the commands of the police that is quite different then if he picks up stick and starts swinging it at them and shouting his own commands.
One can probably be solved by further dialog and the other may not. In any case, lake of an immediate “Yes Sir” should not be seen as “resisting” actively or violently.”
Addressing the first para:
This single issue of illegally selling untaxed cigarettes was not Garner’s first rodeo. At the tyme of his death, Garner was out on a $2,000 bail for three pending such cases. And according to http://www.silive.com/northshore/index.ssf/2014/07/eric_garner_who_died_in_police.html ”
On Aug. 22 of last year, Garner was arrested on School Road and Bay Street, Fort Wadsworth, for allegedly driving without a license, according to a criminal complaint.
Garner, 43, gave cops a phony name and put himself in more hot water when officers allegedly found untaxed cigarettes and a small amount of marijuana in the 1998 Lincoln Navigator he was driving, the complaint said.
He was charged with aggravated unlicensed vehicle operation, false personation, possession or sale of untaxed cigarettes and marijuana possession, according to information from District Attorney Daniel Donovan’s office.
Seven months later, while out on $1,000 bail, Garner was busted on March 28 for allegedly selling unstamped cigarettes on the street outside of 200 Bay St., Tompkinsville. He had 24 packs of untaxed smokes in his possession, police said.
The location is next door to 202 Bay St., where the fatal confrontation occurred Thursday between cops and Garner.
Garner was charged with a misdemeanor count of violating the cigarette and tobacco products tax and posted $1,000 bail, online state court records show.
Garner was arrested again on May 7 on Victory Boulevard and St. Marks Place, Tompkinsville. Cops accused him of possessing six packs of untaxed cigarettes.
Garner last appeared in court to answer the three cases on July 2. The matters were all adjourned then to Oct. 7, online state court records show.
This then explains why the arrest record. As I said, NOT HIS FIRST RODEO. NO, he did not deserve to die for this. BUT, neither should he have resisted arrest. YES, I shall be utterly servile if/when facing arrest. Even if I were wrongly arrested for something someone else did, and it soon comes out my arrest is a case of mistaken identity, I shall not resist.
Also, and I am not really sure if this is significant or not, but the supervising officer in the arrest is a Black woman, Sergeant Kizzy Adoni. Read here for more information regarding this officer. http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/19683-racial-double-standard-in-the-eric-garner-affair. I will say this about that. Either the actions taken met with her approval, by which if so, she is the one responsible for Garner’s demise. OR, if she could not control her subordinates, then she was incompetent and still responsible by omission. .
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@ Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
What does Eric Garner’s misdeeds have to do with the slave trade?
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And by the way, in the case some of you people here dont know, taxes on cigarettes (tobacco) are both State taxes AND federal taxes. Just so you know how highly the national government places its money over lives, Al Capone, the famous 30’s era gangsta, could not be jailed for murder, extortion, bribery, kidnapping and a host of other charges. BUT, he was convicted of income tax evasion and spent the rest of his life in prison. To quote the line Tom Cruise said in the movie, The Firm, “It’s not sexy, but it has teeth!”
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@ abagond,
This is your blog, so I owe you an explanation.
If you read it carefully, I was trying to make my case about how the facts matter when making an argument. Else, in my opinion, if something is skewered it calls into question the whole premise.
Much like your position that due to the nature of man to settle into their own tribes, the modern day contention that “Africans sold their own people into slavery” is a fallacy. One I also agree with and have been saying the same as you for a number of years.
Facts matter and I was just trying to draw another example.
I shall let the matter drop with my apologies for straying from the agenda.
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@Jimmy
I STILL cannot follow your typically tortured, switchback goat path logic, Jimmy, but at least you apologized! You are to be commended for that much, Brother.
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I see that Garner is being portrayed as a person who was deserving of an illegal choke hold and death by cop. But this is once again the demonizing of the victim. Besides, just because you don’t have a license or you drank and drove means you are a bad person it just means you don’t follow the rules as you should. After all look at what some of our presidents have done:
Would you guys be surprised to find out that one of our recent presidents was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972 but got it removed from his record due to his wealthy and powerful family? Lucky for us his friends at the time grew up to write books.
He also was arrested for drunk driving only 4 years later in 1976 and convicted this time.
This guy also responsible for killing thousands of people based on personal gain or profit. His vice president made $39 billion dollars on the death of American soldiers as their families buried their children they were cashing Iraqi oil checks.
So presenting a mans past record means absolutely ZERO in regards to GUILT, thats why it is almost always inadmissible in a court of law.
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The issue is that whites alone are asked to pay up for slavery, given a unique position of culpability.
Despite the fact that blacks in the US owned slaves, whites (irish) were slaves as well, the British Navy and European nations enforced a global ban on slavery, and no other group is given so much a finger wagging over the issue.
So the “just own up to it” argument falls flat when it is purely that you refuse to countenance the idea that whites do not have a monopoly on racism or mistreatment of people.
Besides, no other racial hegemon does permit criticism of their intolerance or passes racist laws against themselves. So the race card loses too much luster
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@ Daniel
I’ve never seen Irishmen chained together with Negroes in antebellum history. Nor do I see institutions created solely to ensure permanent societal underclassdom for whites on the behalf of blacks, as a legacy of slavery.
Speaking of which, when was the last time you saw a black man owning a white man and other white men not saying or doing anything about it? Your guess is as good as mine.
And BTW, using the “other people did it too!!” argument is just piss poor, all things considered.
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The argument that other people did it and so did we is completely and utterly childish and is only an excuse for EVIL.
With that logic, if this is truly what you believe, you would also say that, well the United States used nuclear weapons on Japan so why shouldn’t Pakistan be able to use nuclear weapons on the U.K..
The United states has nuclear weapons so why shouldn’t Iran be able to have nuclear weapons?
ISIS beheads it’s prisoners so why shouldn’t we behead prisoners as well?
Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer so should we excuse any present serial killers because others did it too?
See my point? If this is truly how you believe or think then you are saying that as long as evil has been done by others it is excusable if you do it. I think you know that your excuses are not justifiable and are not your true opinion but a deniability of the white mans evil behavior.
Is that how you raise your kids? “It’s okay Johhny, if your friend robbed a little old lady, then you can too. Your Father gives you his blessing.”
It’s illogical, stupid and ignorant.
Like Mack Lyons said, why don’t you show us some photos of hundreds of Black families circling the hanging, burnt body of a young white youth? I can show you hundreds of Blacks hanging, burnt, beaten and white men, women and children standing around like it was a Sunday picnic….
Pitiful…
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@Daniel. I don’t recall anyone asking anyone to pay anything. But trying to use the handful of creoles in LA and SC who mostly inherited plantations from whites, the indentured servants of the 1600s who became just white Americans, and the end of the transatlantic slave trade in order to absolve the legacy of racial problems brought on because of slavery, along with your previous comments about IQs, just shows that you’re just another wingnut troll.
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RJ, I recall reparations being suggested. Although I disagree with some on this blog. There is nothing for me to face, or feel any connection or guilt about in regards to slavery. I know this will cause some of you on here to go ahead and re-teach some more history, and how it affects blacks now. I ask, do blacks not have opportunities? During my time in the Marines I worked with all sorts of people from different walks of life, and we all were doing very well. Stop dwelling on the past and work to move forward. Educate the communities where you believe they’re being held down.
Racism still exists, there’s bad apples. Being born and raised in the south, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it come from whites, and I’ve seen it come from blacks; honestly more so from blacks, especially in Tallahassee.
Although we’re on different pages, at least we can agree that reparations should not happen.
William the Conqueror; “America rescued Jews from the Germans and to this day send them $3.1 billion dollars a year, this and they have never done anything to Israel. America murders 8 million Blacks and 40 million Natives and not even an apology….Don’t Blacks deserve as much as Israel?”
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@Chase
“I ask, do blacks not have opportunities?”—-Blacks have limited opportunities. Even the top 5% of blacks are limited compared to the white 5% of comparable circumstances.
“Although we’re on different pages, at least we can agree that reparations should not happen.”—I won’t say it shouldn’t, because if someone can present a well documented case for it then I will greatly say it should.
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I hear that, and similar statistics, and just can’t take it too literal. What is it based off and where do you get these numbers from?
You can’t really compare the top 5% of a smaller group of people to the top 5% of a much larger group of people. I am not denying that stereotyping happens, but it goes both ways and definitely does not represent a majority of Americans.
Well as of now you’re saying that you do not know of a good argument in favor of reparations, so I’ll stand by my statement.
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Who do you suggest we pay these reparations to?
How can you justify taking money from a business that undoubtedly has black employees, equal opportunities, and if not those first two things, do not use slaves?
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@Chase
“What is it based off and where do you get these numbers from?”—-I get it where most people get information they are looking for. Research or http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/11/25/years-economic-inequality-push-wealthy-blacks-conservative-investments-white-counterparts/
“I am not denying that stereotyping happens, but it goes both ways and definitely does not represent a majority of Americans.”—Yet the issue is not stereotyping. You are claiming that they have opportunities. I agree they do but not on a comparable scale to their counterparts they do not. The top wealthy who have a ton of opportunities is a prime example because it exemplifies that even with such large opportunities they are limited.
“Well as of now you’re saying that you do not know of a good argument in favor of reparations, so I’ll stand by my statement.”—You are free to stand by your statement, but that does not mean you are free to instruct anyone to agree on no reparations or that as instructed people should follow that logic.
“Who do you suggest we pay these reparations to?”—Only those that own slaves would be responsible for paying it and those that benefit from the free slave labor. Other than that said business would not have to worry if the start up was not based on free slave labor.
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Atlanta Black Star? Okay, Atlanta Black Star did not come up with these statistics.
I am asking where should the money you suggest taking from these businesses go?
If you take money from a business started from slave labor, at minimum 150 years ago or so, it would be punishing everyone that did it right since slavery ended. Blame the government of back then that made it legal to do so, not the businesses, or government of today. If that is the case then start fighting the thousands of businesses that use similar labor all over the world right now.
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@Chase
“Atlanta Black Star? Okay, Atlanta Black Star did not come up with these statistics.”—-Nor did I say they were the ones to come up with those stats. You asked me “where do you get these numbers from?” I provided exactly where I got it from, but I am sure if you read the article they will provided their source. Now that I have provided a source to my claim I would like a source that states blacks have this equal opportunity you seem to believe.
“I am asking where should the money you suggest taking from these businesses go?”—Why exactly are you acting like this is rocket science? It is really simple. It should go to families of individuals that are descendants of slaves.
“Blame the government of back then that made it legal to do so, not the businesses, or government of today. If that is the case then start fighting the thousands of businesses that use similar labor all over the world right now”—Government played it’s part but I don’t remember the government forcing those people to not pay their slaves. Nice try, but doesn’t really work to deflect it towards other entities.
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My post did not go through, but basically because the government did not force slave owners to pay their slaves is terrible. If the government now-a-days made murder legal and acceptable, would that not make them partially responsible for the murders that would occur? Besides that, they owned slaves of their own. Considering only a small percentage of Americans were slave owners, it says a lot that many owners were high up on the chain of command.
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@Chase
“If the government now-a-days made murder legal and acceptable, would that not make them partially responsible for the murders that would occur?”—-No. Not really and if you want to assign some blame it would be very small if at all. It is equivalent to blaming the tv or video games for when kids go on killing sprees. Or people blaming the media for them not doing proper research. It is a choice people make and constantly people refuse to be held accountable for the choices they make. It is always other peoples problem or fault. Well If a slave owner decides to not pay his slaves then it is his fault that his greed for money was more important than basic human rights. Same as if a person decides to go kill. It is their own fault for not caring about basic human rights. They have issues for even wanting to do that.
“Besides that, they owned slaves of their own. Considering only a small percentage of Americans were slave owners, it says a lot that many owners were high up on the chain of command.”—Well if they owned slaves of their own then guess what? They would fall in line with what was originally said above.
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It is pretty unbelievable how you put virtually no blame on the government. I mean it is literally in the Constitution, something that evolves as times change. Who is responsible for that? Business owners or the government?
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@ chase
Please present the part in the constitution that says it is against the law to pay your slaves? Please present the part of the constitution that says you have to have a slave?
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@Chase
“It is pretty unbelievable how you put virtually no blame on the government.”—It is unbelievable because that is not what I said. I said not really. Not not at all.
That is the big key here. Not one slave owner was forced to do anything based on that law. They chose. Sure you can say “it is government fault for putting it into law.” but you can’t say “it is the government’s fault because some greedy individuals decided to not only buy slaves but also refuse to pay them.” That is on the slave owners.
If law stated you may hang your wife will you do it? If you decided to do it then will the government be at fault for your choice to do so? I think American government is crap, but Americans need to really stop passing the blame to everyone but themselves.
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@George Ryder
As much as you would like to bait me into a discussion/argument/ whatever with you, I am not interested in later hearing you cry…”i’m the victim.” Go get your jollies elsewhere.
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Here’s one of many. They can condone and accept slavery without demanding you to own slaves.
Article IV Section 2.
“No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom Service or Labour may be due.”
I have a copy of the original constitution in front of me.
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@Chase
That article is not saying:
1. You have to own a slave. It is not saying you have no choice.
2. It is against the law to pay your slave.
This is what I requested. What you showed me is a law saying if a slave escapes he will be returned to owner.
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@ George
Your comments are no longer being automatically moderated. Please let me know if you have any trouble.
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Listen the U.S. government gives 3.1 billion dollars to Isreal…why? Who are we paying those reparations to? I am white and I am the one saying the families that profited from slavery and who murdered slaves are, under the law of our country, vulnerable to civil suits.
The bottom line is that every company, every family that got wealthy by enslaving human beings should be giving the families of those who made that profit possible, the slaves, a percentage of what is due….of course only a suit will make that happen but remember there is no statute of limitations on murder…..
As far as if it was the country, land owners, etc…just replace all of those with WHITE MEN!
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I have to disagree with you there. It is most definitely referring to slaves. Fugitive Slave Clause as it is known.
Your bloodline is not a crime, nor is it a charity case. Look forward not backwards.
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Your bloodline is not a crime but your financial gain based on others hard work is civil negligence and is proven time and time again in court.
Besides no one is saying just give people money and I have never heard a Black person say that. However, Native Americans were given land for our treatment of them, albeit 90% of it was taken back, par for course for the white man.
Since the day after the emancipation proclamation the Black people have not been given one single bit of assistance at assimilating to a white mans culture and as a matter of fact to this very day is still experiencing disparaging discrimination from many people and establishments and that is proven time and time again in a court of law, by studies, statistics and real time reports.
You don’t oppress a man for hundreds of years and then just throw them to the wolves so to speak. The facts are it has only been 50 years since the “LAW” recognized Blacks as equal in eyes of whites, as high as 50% of those hearts have not changed and whether you can blame bloodlines it is a fact that HATE is passed down through BLOODLINES.
It is no secret that the people that were treated like property and were not allowed to vote, mingle or do business in white areas, were hung, beat, burned, oppressed, etc….are still at the bottom of every social statistic, they were the very people who were enslaved by the whites.
It is our responsibility as human beings to give these people the help they need so that they too can get a proper education, clean up their cities, combat gang violence, get employment, etc…..The white man brought them here, the white man abused them, the white man is responsible for most of their struggles. It is the same as if you go with your friend to rob a store and your friend shoots and kills the shop owner, you both are GUILTY of murder.
It is really easy for a white man to say the past is the past as he goes into a hotel lobby and is judged for his actions and not his skin skin color or when he goes home from his job he is not worried about being pulled over and shot by a cop or when he is out of work he doesn’t have to turn in 4 times more applications or you don’t have to wait twice as long for a cab or look for apartments in high crime areas because the landlords don’t rent to Blacks in the safe areas, etc, etc….It is really easy to say lets move forward, look at the bright side…at least “I’m” doing well.
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@George……”i 100 percent agree with you. but it’s extremely complicated and will require a ton of research. i’d think the first step would be research, government sanctioned research with the goal of identifying a provable money trail.”
I agree with you as well and this is why it will probably never happen, too much money and too little evidence but maybe just maybe some of the corporations or subsidiaries that are still around that can be verified by documents and evidence can be held accountable one day.
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Statement now.
Source later.
Just wanted to get this out here now.
In many cases, mayhaps far more than we can now, those Africans of involuntary servitude were paid. OR, were provided a means through which they could earn money. How else could we ever have learned of a slave buying his freedom, and/or his family people?
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
It was not many cases. It was actually quite rare and I can provide a source now.
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/emancipation/text1/text1read.htm
“How else could we ever have learned of a slave buying his freedom, and/or his family people?”—-The same way we end up rarely hearing about those blacks that came over and were not slaves….by design. Most stories like that are a bit of fiction made to seem more common than it was.
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Read carefully and learn what they had to do to “pay” for their freedom and money was not always what did it.
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For those of you who do not believe the government was complicit in the act of slavery, here is the proof that it was…..
Provisions in the Original Constitution
Article I, Section. 2 [Slaves count as 3/5 persons]
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons [i.e., slaves].
Article I, Section. 9, clause 1. [No power to ban slavery until 1808]
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
Article IV, Section. 2. [Free states cannot protect slaves]
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
Article V [No Constitutional Amendment to Ban Slavery Until 1808]
…No Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article.
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Also Jimmy I get what logic you are trying to get at about them being paid, but they were being paid by outside sources for their services t that source and not services for working for the slave master. I swear you try way to hard to make a point that never seems to connect.
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@William the Conqueror
“For those of you who do not believe the government was complicit in the act of slavery, here is the proof that it was”—No one said the government wasn’t but that is greatly besides the point. The point is that you can not blame the government for the acts that one chooses to commit. If that is the case then why not blame the government for a car wreck you might have or abortion.
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Blah blah blah.
Do you blame the government for the practice of slavery today in the U.S.?
It amazes me how a law on paper is what causes people to do these things, yet that law is no longer on the book and slavery is still practiced in America. ROFL
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^^^Signing off on something does not make a person do it, so it is pretty darn obvious that blaming the “government” is pointless. With or without the law people still practice.
So a proposed fine for putting it into law that it was legal? A fine to pay a part of the reparations including the slave labor of white house building? Why not.
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@George Ryder
“signing off on it tells all of society it’s approved & acceptable behavior.”—But that also implies that without law people are incapable of having human compassion. That a law must be on the books to make them have common sense. If that is the case then the American people are sheep who blame the Shepard for them deciding to go astray. Blame the government but it also allows people to not take responsibility for their own actions. A trait that many Americans excel at.
The law only ensures they do not get put in jail for it, but by far it still does not make them decided to do it.
It is not pointless because the government was built on slave labor, but I can promise you the American people will be paying for any reparations the government has to pay. The only way to make them pay is to make the person who put the law on the books to pay. Him or his descendants at this point, but I doubt their contribution should or will be the amount of the slave owners.
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^^^ It may be easier but it most certainly is not right.
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“Free Frank could neither read nor write. We know his story because his descendents have passionately committed to telling it. There are perhaps thousands of stories like the Free Frank story, thousands of stories of slave entrepreneurs who bought their freedom and went on to amass wealth, even in the face of oppressive capitalism.”
Here is one: http://weiwentg.blogspot.com/2009/02/buying-their-freedom-roots-of-black.html
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@Jimmy
For starters I would like to post this disclaimer from your blog post source “The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author, Dr. Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College for Women.”
Now that we have that out the way we can address the meat of your claims. The author as you quoted states thousands of blacks like this yet only manages to tell one story and was not able to come up with the “thousands” more that had certainly made great strides according to her.
This one guy still does not disprove how rare the situation was nor does this source show that slaves in general were paid for their servitude. Not to mention this idea that many had a side job.
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And Sharina,
Neither can you prove otherwise.
Plus, for anyone else interested at all in what one New England yankee abolitionist saw and wrote about in 1854, check out this book: http://books.google.com/books?id=rXMFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA24&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
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@ Sharinair.
Elizabeth Keckley wrote that in 1868. Very good writing for someone who most people to day believe no slaves could read or write. Else, she had no learning curve, but a line straight up.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Considering you made the claim it does not become my job to “prove otherwise” it becomes your job to prove. At this point providing a person’s opinion on the “thousands” does not prove your point. My source above trumps yours as it is not a opinion pice but a historical account of not one but 3 slaves accounts.
“Very good writing for someone who most people to day believe no slaves could read or write”—-Another rare situation that you are claiming is common and no proof to support. Your arguments are just ridiculous diatribe to argue.
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@ Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Now to reiterate your claim….
“In many cases, mayhaps far more than we can now, those Africans of involuntary servitude were paid. OR, were provided a means through which they could earn money.” You need to provide a source of the “many” cases showing that Africans were paid for their involuntary servitude or that they were provided a means through which they can earn money. One person and an opinion piece is not going to support this claim. If you can not provide that then your argument was thus far a lost cause.
Furthermore I am well aware of your attempt to deflect from the case of reparations by claiming thousands were paid. It is documented (an estimate I am sure) that 597,000 slaves were in the American Colonies. Let’s pretend your “Many” claim is true, then it still does not take away the others that would have a valid claim to reparations if well documented. On top of that those that had a side job working for another would still have claims to reparations as the slave owner would not have been the one that paid them for working for him, but the side job employer would be paying for the work the slave is doing for them.
Now I did my own research on Free frank and turns out his little luck goes a bit deeper. “Frank McWorter was born 1777 into slavery in South Carolina to Juda, born in West Africa, abducted into slavery and transported to the colony. His father was likely her white master, George McWhorter, a Scots-Irish plantation owner. According to family tradition, Juda had to convince McWhorter to allow his mixed-race son to live”. It was not uncommon for slave masters to try to take care of their mixed race kids in some way or another, so unlike the average slave he had that advantage.
http://www.freefrank.org/history-of-free-frank_a-slave-who-would-be-free.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Frank_McWorter
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@Jimmy: Your joking right? I mean that reference to Nehemiah Adams. The book was written in 1854 as a so called theological tract:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehemiah_Adams
Folks, read the ex-slave narratives they are available on Project Gutenberg and Kobo, Amazon etc.
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@ Herneith
The man wrote what he saw. He spent three months touring the South. Sheesh, what kind of denialist are you anyway? AND, I bet if you measured all the accounts of good master versus bad master in the Slave Narratives, I bet the good ones would win.
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Hernieth and Sharinalr…..”Folks, read the ex-slave narratives they are available on Project Gutenberg and Kobo, Amazon etc.”
Folks, read the ex-slave narratives they are available on Project Gutenberg and Kobo, Amazon etc.These are heartbreaking accounts of human suffering.
The terms, “good master” and “bad master” are not relevant. The relevant term is MASTER. If you were enslaved by the white man in America I guess you would prefer a good master over a bad master but like I’ve pointed out before, thats like saying Jeffrey Dahmer was a nicer serial killer than John Gasey because he didn’t torture his VICTIMS, key word victims. Another example would be that Japan was more honorable than the United States in WWll as they bombed military targets and the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on women and children civilians. The term “good master” is contradictory in terms. Hernieth and Sharinalr you pointed out the “rule” and not the few “exceptions”. Good job!
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Yep, Africans sold “other Africans” as slaves, and it’s still happening today. Note, that I changed “their own people”. Yep, you guys are not all “brothers and sisters”. The only thing that bonds black people is their universal hate of the white race and might I say, their deep jealousy and inferiority complex.
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Wayne….Black people have influenced the entire world youth culture for the last 30 years, they are clearly physically superior to our pasty pot bellied white physique and those that have climbed the towering wall of white supremacy oppression and systematic obstruction and have educated themselves beyond odds a white man could NEVER overcome because they do not have the fight or the character to withstand such discrimination due to our 400 years of privilege, they are climbing the professional ladder all on their own accord. If anyone is jealous or has a inferiority complex and has a physical appendage envy it is clearly white racist men….Comprehend much?
Wayne when was the last time you saw a large group of white people come to the defense of someone they do not know against the cops, stand together against brutal white man abuses, etc.. White people are the biggest back stabbers in the entire world. If a white man sees his neighbor needing help the first thing they do is close their drapes and mind their own business. White people are only concerned with their own asses. Believe me I know this first hand. Black people are always sticking together just like they were brothers and sisters. It is when they were enslaved by the immoral evil white man is when this term began. But I doubt you know much about history and only know how to hate like most white men.
Abagond…Thank you for letting these low IQ racist post even though it is clear they have no real substance to add except to prove that white racism is alive and doing quite well today just as it did 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, etc…
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Wayne
Interesting. So where is that source that shows African’a still selling other African’a as slaves? Is it next to that source of American whites selling white children into slavery?
Sounds more like you are suffering from some jealousy and inferiority complexity, but I won’t judge. 🙂
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@William the Conqueror
Isn’t it funny how you can’t even have your own opinion anymore. Yet Wayne’s opinion went so unchallenged. hmmm…..
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George my response and my opinion, as Shainalr so eloquently pointed out, was to Waynes comment. Why my comment was a generalization…so was his.
Can I ask why you did not challenge Waynes comments?
Can you also disprove my statements based on my experiences? No you cannot and remember, as you say my friend, “I calls them as I see them”.
(I will say that I was harsh and though my comments are not true for all whites there is some truth in all of my comments and I was pissed. It is because of whites like wayne that we even have discussions like this.)
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William the conquerer,
You said, “The terms, “good master” and “bad master” are not relevant. The relevant term is MASTER. If you were enslaved by the white man in America I guess you would prefer a good master over a bad master but like I’ve pointed out before, thats like saying Jeffrey Dahmer was a nicer serial killer than John Gasey because he didn’t torture his VICTIMS, key word victims. Another example would be that Japan was more honorable than the United States in WWll as they bombed military targets and the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on women and children civilians. The term “good master” is contradictory in terms.”
It is painfully obvious there will not be common ground found between the advocates of emotionalism and the advocates of fact and logic. You people here who advocate emotionalism believe this trumps fact and logic. AND this is totally illogical.
So, consider these words spoken in June of 1887 at Baltimore, Maryland:
And I quote, “”Change of views in regard to the intellectual, moral and social status of the Negro. The philanthropists used to tell of the cruelty and brutality of slaveholders to their slaves, and said that they had reduced the negroes to the lowest state of ignorance, barbarism and bestiality. But in the reconstruction period, the philanthropists underwent a radical change of views and discovered that these negroes, whom they had described as more savage and degraded than the barbarians on the Congo, were not merely enlightened and civilized enough to be freemen and voters, but also to be United States Senators and Congressmen, Foreign Ministers, Consuls and Marshals, Governors of States, Judges, Members of State Cabinets, &c. I am glad that the philanthropists found out that the Old South had trained its slaves so carefully for these high and responsible duties. No other masters in the world’s history ever gave such training to their slaves. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States are the grandest possible eulogies to the Old South.””
This man pretty much summed it up. Either it were or it werent. Bad masters? Good masters? YES, very relevant. Unlike the absurd comparison of WtC, more like having a sadist as a master, or a tender hearted Christ-loving person as a master. And of course somewhere in betwixt.
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It is painfully obvious there will not be common ground found between the advocates of emotionalism and the advocates of fact and logic.
Painfully obvious? Who’s being emotional now? I believe you’re disgruntled because no one agrees with you except your fellow loons.
Was the above quote from the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klowns?
Either it were or it werent. Bad masters? Good masters? YES, very relevant.
Are you into S&M Jimmy? No? Well neither am I but a man like you could put in the mood for it. I would teach you what a master could do. I would show you the logic of it.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“You people here who advocate emotionalism believe this trumps fact and logic”—Picking out a few experiences is not using fact or logic Jimmy. I asked you several times to support your claim of these thousands of “good” Masters that allowed all these slaves to earn money or have these side jobs to pay for their enslaved family members, but all you come up with is a book of a man’s account which you really can’t even say how factual it is. I know of some books by slaves that account otherwise too, so should I drag those out as more factual because they actual lived the life one man claims to only have viewed?
Really you are on an emotional tyrade about any and everything someone says that you don’t agree with and then can’t manage to provide anywhere near a historical account for anything you say.
Cry us a river.
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@jimmy…The only thing you have to be concerned with, in regards to slavery, is the word SLAVERY. I would ask you this, Would you submit yourself to free labor to a very nice Christian person, we already know the answer so don’t bother. Would you submit your children to sex with their “Christian” MASTER? Would you submit your children to be sold off to a less NICE MASTER? We all know the answer Jimmy so don’t bother.
Your excuse of, “Oh come on guys, it wasn’t all bad, there were some nice MASTERS too.” Is another bullshit idiopathic example of dissonance by a man who doesn’t want to admit that people who share his same skin color and who controlled and lived in this country were inherently part of an EVIL CULTURE that to some extent continues to this very day, well get a grip because it is all FACTUAL. Just because you can find one or two instances of MILD cases of white supremacy does not mean that it trumps the 5,000 accounts of the opposite (Of course that number is exaggerated but I don’t give a shit, it emphasizes my point).
(By the way white men who CLAIMED to be Christian committed some of the worse atrocities in history, FACT!)
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@Herneith
LOL. That dude Jimmy has been using an appeal to emotion since he got here.
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@William the Conqueror
I think what you said was a bit extreme, but not any more extreme than Wayne’s comment. It does highlight the double standards in it all. Wayne’s comment did not provoke not one response from those that supposedly believe in equality.
I recommend not letting them make you angry. Laugh at them or just make fun of them. Herneith is very good at doing this and I recommend following her example.
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Sharinalr……thank you girl, I will take your advice and give it my best. I still harbor a lot of anger for those cowards that picked on my mother for dating a Black man and a few of the people here remind me of those asses. I can’t by definition call them men because a man would not say these things to any woman. Thanks again my dear, you are a good, intelligent, passionate and compassionate person, I value your opinion very much.
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1. Skin color is not a race and I have been clear from day one that the color of a mans skin cannot determine what kind of person they will be.
2. I am a realist, I too call them like I see them, experienced them and how I would feel in another mans shoes. I am not a self hater but when I see something I am honest about what I see and I take out the bias part and replace it with the moral and honest part.
3. I may not be as refined as some of you debaters and because of my life I might be a little harder, if I can use a slang term. This hardening sometimes gets the better of me and I go off the rails and make some emotional exaggerations and attacks on people who share my physiology. These comments are based in truth however and I have for along time come to terms with my body and my limitations.
It is a fact that Black people come from a continent with harsh conditions and due to these conditions after 10,000 years of evolution the Black man and woman are physically stronger and clearly as a whole, superior to most of the white people of the world, if you can’t see that I can’t help you. Growing up as I was going through a chubby phase, all of my Black friends were going through their, “I don’t even have to work out and I still look like a pro athlete stage”. I was very jealous because I had to workout day in and day out and I still could not get that lean muscle mass that my friends had. I hate to use a stereo type but for the sake of this argument I will, look at sports Blacks dominate. Boxing, football, basketball, baseball, soccer… While each person is a separate case and there are many physically great whites, Asians, Latinos, etc….By and large the Black population, which has endured physical labor and survival as a people as early as only a few decades ago have denser bones and denser muscle tissue, whereas the white men have been inventing machines or using slaves or laborers to do their bidding for hundreds of years now. The white man has been inherently lazy for far too long and this now is imprinted in our DNA, dropped down from father to son….
4. I don’t hate white people, who I share skin color with, I despise white racist and the white supremacy and establishment that white racist, mostly conservatives have created. I acknowledge that there are many good white people and there always have been but the conservative whites have cost humanity so much grief and created so much evil and I will not ignore it just because I share the same skin color.
Besides I might be white on the outside…but Baby I am all Black on the inside…POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
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@William the Conqueror
Don’t sell yourself short. You don’t have to write eloquent and refine sentences to get your point across and you should not allow people to make what you say less than simply because you don’t. There insecurities is what allows them to focus on that, but their problems should not become yours.
Most of these apologists have no real argument to begin with and they use any and everything to fluff it. And fluff can be anywhere from name calling to outright lies. Observe and watch how they weave a web to cause confusion in hopes you will forget the whole point of the debate/argument to begin with. Jimmy has been good at this. Stick to your guns. Ever wonder why Rayfield ignores certain commenters?
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@ William the Conqueror
You nothing but a white version of an Uncle Tom. When reading your comments I get the feeling that you are mostly looking for approval and that you sound like a brainwashed white kid that’s just come out of the liberal education system that the USA has adopted .
1.5 Percent of whites owned slaves in the USA, the other 98.5 worked the skin off their hands! Have a look at pictures of the white setters that were taken in the 19th and 20th century. No potbellies or pasty skin there! These people were hard and tough! Something that you lack! Your comment regarding white privilege is just another cliché that is thrown around all the time.
As I said, and you confirmed it in your comment, blacks only stand together when against whites for an injustice even if it is not warranted or justified. The OJ Simpson case was a perfect example. Talk about blind racism!
I would not brag about the youth culture that the USA exports these days. C”rappers with bad, tough attitudes (tiring) and diva’s one step away from strippers. Let’s not get started on the reality shows.
If Abagond had to ban all racists from his blog there would be no comments as all the members here are racist, including Abagond himself! Or you could believe the biggest cop out of all that he promotes! That blacks can’t be racist because they do not have the power!
@ Sharinair
It’s out there, go and find it. Really not hard angel! 😉
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Wayne…”You nothing but a white version of an Uncle Tom.”
I hope you realize how good that makes me feel coming from a guy like you. Mission accomplished.
“you sound like a brainwashed white kid that’s just come out of the liberal education system that the USA has adopted .”
How did I know that each and every one of you racist was conservative…hmmmm let me think, because every RACIST IS A CONSERVATIVE. Just to show you how your perception of others is weak, after high school and until I was 28 years old I was a Reagan loving conservative and then I read my Bible. I stopped going to church and listening to that right wing anti-christian bullshit and I wanted God to speak to me himself because every election my Pasture spoke in direct opposition to the Gospel. I also was so sick of hearing my racist friends, my racist coworkers and racist at the bars I went to whine and complain about Blacks, Asians, Latinos and so on…They take our jobs, their lazy, they get interest free loans. Yes and all that the white man did to them was enslave them, lynch them, take their land, make them build our railroads, treat them like dirt for oh let me see, forever. After my second time reading my Bible I did a complete turn around politically and registered as a hippy tree hugging Liberal just like Christ and I have not looked back since…the sweet smell of morality, can you smell it? Probably not.
“1.5 Percent of whites owned slaves in the USA, the other 98.5 worked the skin off their hands!”
The southern population owned slaves at 4.8% and lets face it, the south is who we had the problem with. Of course the percentage of slave owners were low, inequality was almost as bad in 1860 as it is today, only the wealthy owned slaves just like only the wealthy can afford any of the maniacal things of today; hunting preserves in Africa or Arizona, vacations in CUBA, CEO wage increases while they give reductions in wage earner salaries, etc..
“Have a look at pictures of the white setters that were taken in the 19th and 20th century. No potbellies or pasty skin there!”
“As I said, and you confirmed it in your comment, blacks only stand together when against whites for an injustice even if it is not warranted or justified. The OJ Simpson case was a perfect example. Talk about blind racism!”
Talk about pure ignorance and a lack of accountability. How do you think Blacks in America got this way? Blacks are the most oppressed group of people to this day. Blacks could not vote until just 50 years ago. Blacks could not own property in white areas of the south just 50 years ago. Black could not marry white women just a few decades ago and most of the old laws have not been removed from the books in southern states, almost like a way to dehumanize Blacks after white conservatives opposed EVERY SINGLE CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION but lost. Tells you just a little bit about conservative ldeals, doesn’t it?
“I would not brag about the youth culture that the USA exports these days.”
No one was bragging sherlock, you said that they have an inferiority complex and I pointed out that they have more confidence in their little finger than most whites do and then I pointed out how much influence they have over the world. And who deems pop culture, sports culture and entertainment as something negative? WHITE RACIST? Big deal, what would a white racist conservative know about being cool or being creative or getting along with an entire generation? Conservative racist have had the same views, same boring personalities and zero creativeness forever, so to be judged by a white racist is like being judged by your Grandfather. Conservatives have never once influenced an entire culture or generation and they never will thats why the only respect they get is when they buy or take power and then enforce their ideals on people. Besides let me remind you about some great people, some great AMERICANS….Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama (worlds most admired man 6 years in a row), Denzel Washington, Martin Luther King, Beyonce, Michelle Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Madame C. J. Walker (first black woman millionaire), Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver, Magic Johnson, Chris Gardner, Nelson Mandela , Desmond Tutu, Mohammed Ali ,Maya Angelou.
How can a Black American be racist? We will never know because we cannot undo the 400 years of white hate, white racism, white atrocities and white supremacist culture. In Africa nations that have been almost free from white influence or colonialism Black people love and adore all people, especially whites. Only in South Africa is there the dislike for whites by Blacks but we all know how that came to be, it’s the same way it happened here. When white men enslave you, your government omits you as a human being until it comes to taxes and then slave owners are allowed to claim you as 3/5 of a person, white men hang you, rape your children, dump hundreds of thousands of you in the ocean, don’t let you vote, don’t let you eat at their restaurants, keep you from getting a good job, a good education, etc, etc, etc….You tend to hold some animosity towards those people…just a tad.
My comment was a direct reaction to yours, so yes it was harsh but for every action there is an opposite and EQUAL reaction. If you want to be a racist then you are going to get the horns. Every one knows there are good white people and good Black people and vice versa. However it is the wealthy white man and his conservative followers, his arrogance, his hypocrisy and his insecure need to take others stuff and dominate the EARTH that WILL BE the destruction of mankind unless we change their maniacal path. These type of people do not get along with others, it is their way or the genocidal highway.
Your are just another minimalist just like the evil men of 1860. “Come on Mr. Lincoln, blacks own slaves too, only 200,000 of us own slaves, thats not too bad, give a white supremacist a break.”
Conservative racist always make light of the EVIL they do.
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“The southern population owned slaves at 4.8% and lets face it, the south is who we had the problem with. Of course the percentage of slave owners were low, inequality was almost as bad in 1860 as it is today, only the wealthy owned slaves…”
On this, without further reading your post, which I will get back to, I must take exception to. Overall, out of a population of 8 million, only 383,637 owned slaves and there were few individuals in 1860 who qualified as planters, owning more than twenty slaves. Then there was the planter class. 46,000 planters owned twenty slaves. 2,200 planters owned 100 slaves. 11 planters owned 500 slaves. 1 planter owned 1,000 slaves. So, subtracting 48,212 planters from the overall slave owning number you get 335,425 people who owned less than 20. Mostly way less.
Most southerners were in the Middle Class and were considered yeoman farmers, holding only a few acres and living in modest homes and cabins, raising hogs and chickens, and growing corn and cotton. Few yeoman farmers had any slaves and if they did own slaves, it was only one or two. Yeoman farming families owned an average of fifty acres and produced for themselves most of what they needed. These farmers traded farm produce like milk and eggs for needed services such as shoemaking and blacksmithing.
Also, one can not just count one person as being a slave owner. One MUST take into account the whole family. Thus, only about 25 percent of white households owned any slaves.
Additionally, there were protections written into the State’s Constitutions. Such as this from Texas in 1845:
ARTICLE VIII.
SLAVES.
SECTION 1. The Legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of their owners, nor without paying their owners previous to such emancipation, a full equivalent in money for the slaves so emancipated. — They shall have no power to prevent emigrants to this State from bringing with them such persons as are deemed slaves, by the laws of any of the United States, so long as any person of the same age or description shall be continued in slavery by the laws of this State: Provided, that such slave be the bona fide property of such emigrants — provided also that laws shall be passed to inhibit the introduction into this State of slaves who have committed high crimes in other states or territories. They shall have the right to pass laws to permit the owners of slaves to emancipate them, saving the rights of creditors, and preventing them from becoming a public charge. They shall have full power to pass laws, which will oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity, to provide for their necessary food and clothing, to abstain from all injuries to them extending to life or limb, and in case of their neglect or refusal to comply with the directions of such laws, to have such slave or slaves taken from such owner, and sold for the benefit of such owner or owners. They may pass laws to prevent slaves from being brought into this State as merchandize only.
SECTION 2. In the prosecution of slaves for crimes of a higher grade that petit larceny, the Legislature shall have no power to deprive them of an impartial trial by a petit jury.
SECTION 3. Any person who shall maliciously dismember, or deprive a slave of life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted, in case the like offence had been committed upon a free white person, and on the like proof — except in case of insurrection of such slave.
This from Alabama in 1819:
SLAVES.
SEC. 1. The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves, without the consent of their owners, or without paying their owners, previous to such emancipation, a full equivalent in money for the slaves so emancipated. They shall have no power to prevent emigrants to this State from bringing with them such persons as are deemed slaves by the laws of any one of the United States, so long as any person of the same age or description shall be continued in slavery by the laws of this State: Provided, that such person or slave be the bona fide property of such emigrants; and provided, also, that laws may be passed to prohibit the introduction into this State of slaves, who have committed high crimes in other States or Territories. They shall have power to pass laws to permit the owners of slaves to emancipate them, saving the rights of creditors, and preventing them from becoming a public charge. They shall have full power to prevent slaves from being brought into this State as merchandize, and also to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity, to provide for them necessary food and clothing, to abstain from all injuries to them extending to life or limb, and, in case of their neglect, or refusal to comply with the directions of such laws, to have such slave or slaves sold for the benefit of the owner or owners.
SEC. 2. In the prosecution of slaves for crimes, of a higher grade than petit larceny, the General Assembly shall have no power to deprive them of an impartial trial by a petit jury.
SEC. 3. Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offence had been committed on a free white person, and on the like proof; except in case of insurrection of such slave.
This from Mississippi in 1832:
Slaves
Sect. 1. The legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of their owners, unless where the slave shall have rendered to the state some distinguished service, in which case the owner shall be paid a full equivalent for the slave so emancipated. They shall have no power to prevent emigrants to this state from bringing with them such persons as are deemed slaves by the laws of any one of the United States, so long as any person of the same age or description shall be continued in slavery by the laws of this state: Provided, That such person or slave be the bona fide property of such emigrants: And provided, also, That laws may be passed to prohibit the introduction into this state, of slaves who may have committed high crimes in other states. They shall have power to pass laws to permit the owners of slaves to emancipate them, saving the rights of creditors, and preventing them from becoming a public charge. They shall have full power to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity, to provide for them necessary clothing and provisions, to abstain from all injuries to them extending to life or limb, and in case of their neglect or refusal to comply with the direction of such laws, to have such slave or slaves sold for the benefit of the owner or owners.
Sect. 2. The introduction of slaves into this state as merchandise or for sale, shall be prohibited from and after the first day of May, eighteen hundred and thirty-three: Provided, That the actual settler or settlers shall not be prohibited from purchasing slaves in any state in this Union, and bringing them into this state for their own individual use, until the year eighteen hundred and forty-five.
Sect. 3. In the prosecution of slaves for crimes of which the punishment is not capital, no inquest by a grand jury shall be necessary: but the proceedings in such cases shall be regulated by law.
So, to make the claim Slave had no legal protection at all just is not true.
Also, here is another link about involuntary African servitude. http://tdl.org/txlor-dspace/bitstream/handle/2249.3/593/03_southern_soc.htm?sequence=4
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“Blacks could not vote until just 50 years ago.”
Not true at all. The 15th Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote regardless race, colour, etc. was declared ratified on 3 February 1870.
I can say this about Barry Ebama. He is a supremely arrogant narcissist. He so often refers to himself one must wonder if he had a mirror installed over his bed at the White house so he sees himself first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.
As for m.l. king, as a serial adulterer, he effectively lied to his wife regarding his marital vows. Thus he was a liar.
He plagiarised his college thesis. Since plagiarism is intellectual thievery, this made him a thief. Thus king was a liar and a thief. Hardly an admirable person. He was flawed fundamentally.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
As for m.l. king, as a serial adulterer, he effectively lied to his wife regarding his marital vows. Thus he was a liar.
He plagiarised his college thesis. Since plagiarism is intellectual thievery, this made him a thief. Thus king was a liar and a thief. Hardly an admirable person. He was flawed fundamentally.
So was Bill Clinton – I bet you wont be talking about him in that way though..
Re MLK, so what if he was those things? It is all about what he was striving for that is important and what people should remember him for.
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As for Bill Clinton, of course I would. He absolutely WAS a big tyme thief and liar. Not to mention the cloud of suspicion hanging over him regarding the homicide of several peoples dating back to his being governor.
I would not even be mentioning these things had the Black people left George Washington alone. This country would not exist but for him. Many historians agree with this.
YET, for no other reason than that he was a slave owner, American Blacks have gotten schools named for him changed. And that is something I shall not abide. Fair is fair, tat for tit.
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Wayne
If it was so “out there” you would be able to simply provide a source with little or no effort. It is your claim doll so you will need to support it. Not my job to do your work.
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Here are some exerts from THE GILDER LERHMAN INSTITUTE of AMERICAN HISTORY
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/slavery-and-anti-slavery/resources/facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery
Approximately 11,863,000 Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, with a death rate during the Middle Passage reducing this number by 10-20 percent. As a result between 9.6 and 10.8 million Africans arrived in the Americas.
Slaveholding became more concentrated over time. The fraction of households owning slaves fell from 36 percent in 1830 to 25 percent in 1860.
The distribution of wealth in the South was much more unequal than that of the North.
Nearly 2 of 3 males with estates of $100,000 or more lived in the South in 1860.
If the North and South are treated as separate nations, the South was the fourth most prosperous nation in the world in 1860. Italy did not achieve the southern level of per capita income until the eve of World War II.
Civil War During the Civil War, 140,500 freed slaves and 38,500 free blacks served in the Union Army.
Most infants were weaned within three or four months
There were few instances in which slave women were released from field work for extended periods during slavery. Even during the last week before childbirth, pregnant women on average picked three-quarters or more of the amount normal for women.
Half of all slave babies died in the first year of life–twice the rate for white babies.
The average birth weight of slave infants was less than 5.5 pounds.
Slave children were tiny; their average height did not reach three feet until they were 4; they were 5.5 inches shorter than modern children and comparable to children in Bangladesh and the slums of Lagos.
At 17, slave men were shorter than 96 percent of men today and slave women shorter than 80 percent of contemporary women.
Slaves did not reach their full stature—67 inches for men and 62.5 inches for women—until their mid-20s.
Children entered the labor force as early as 3 or 4. Some were taken into the master’s house to be servants while others were assigned to special children’s gangs called “trash gangs,” which swept yards, cleared drying cornstalks from fields, chopped cotton, carried water to field hands, weeded, picked cotton, fed work animals, and drove cows to pasture.
By age 7, over 40 percent of the boys and half the girls had entered the work force. At about 11, boys began to transfer to adult field jobs.
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This repeated talk of slave ownership has gotten so far derailed it is not even funny. Most of the individuals that are harping on it can’t even stick with their original claims. Trying to isolate slave ownership to the southern states is naive and careless. The north only freed 75% of slaves by 1810 and the rest in 1829. According to stats the 385,000 ownership only deals with southern states alone at the peak of slavery. This in turn seeks to ignore or sidestep Northern ownership because it is better to make the south the big bad slave beast. If we take into account the stats that are available then it was about 378000 individuals that owned slaves. The real question is will arguing over how many whites owned slaves exonerate the owners? Will it exonerate the whites who upheld it? Will it change anything? OR will it just make some of you feel good about yourself? If you did not own slaves I am curious on why the heavy guilt trip?
@ Wayne
“That blacks can’t be racist because they do not have the power!”—
Considering Abagond wrote a post on him being racist, I highly doubt that. Your type always project. It is the nature of the beast I guess.
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jimmy……you should know that your meager opinion of Obama, Clinton and any other great Democrat is but a very small minority of the world. That says a great deal about your opinion and it’s bias unsubstantiated evidence. These opinions are relegated to mostly white conservative Americans while the rest of the world see these men as great leaders who bolster equality, sustained growth, building of infrastructure and Not one conservative can top these men in Job growth. The last 4 republican presidents have destroyed and collapsed the economy and our financial institutions as well as Reagan creating more inequality than any other man in history, virtually wiping out the middle class. We won’t even mention George bush’s use of taxes to purchase the Texas Rangers, his families ties with Osama Bin Laden, his families ties with Noriega, his illegal war in Iraq and his responsibility for the death of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people. Bushs 2 week delay in response to Katrina, his cocaine addiction and ultimate possession charge dropped because of his family ties, his DUI’s and his 900 documented lies. Reagans underground selling of American military equipment to the Iranians for money to support MURDER SQUADS in Nicaragua. the list goes on and on and you are now a shrinking conservative minority, how does it feel to be so small. The world is sick and tired of the hippocracy that conservatives spew and the arrogance of their policies. They want to govern people based on their ideals and not govern people based on what the people want or need. Conservative policy can be wrapped up with a few arrogant statements; “Do as I say not as I do” and “If you would act like us we wouldn’t have to oppress you…much.”
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@Jimmy
“YET, for no other reason than that he was a slave owner, American Blacks have gotten schools named for him changed. And that is something I shall not abide. Fair is fair, tat for tit.”—-Can you separate some black people from American Blacks? I think not because whenever that little scenario happened I was, like many, not old enough to care or know. If I was old enough I guess I did not care enough to be involved.
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@ William
I wonder how long it will take Wayne to realize that Africans are not just black people? 😉
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The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73) on August 6, 1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States.
Ronald Reagan, with pressure from congress and to make up for his continued alliance with South Africa and his refusal to sign off on an embargo against the white supremacist South African apartheid state, signed a continuation that protected Blacks against gerrymandering, voter suppression, poll taxes etc., in 1982, however recently the wonderful, non racist, moral and loving conservatives (sarcasm) repealed that extension recently, ultimately affecting the Black and Liberal vote by 3 million votes…If you can’t win, CHEAT!
https://www.aclu.org/timeline-history-voting-rights-act
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Sharinalr…probably as long as it took him to find out that it doesn’t happen to all men and his girlfriend was just being kind.
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I forgot to add this to my voter rights act post. Although the Federal law gave rights to all men to vote, it wasn’t long before the southern states signed into law ways to keep Blacks from voting and it did for another 100 years and that is why Black in America or the United States have only had equal rights for a meager 50 years out of the 400 plus years they have been here.
[After the U.S. Civil War (1861-65), the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Nevertheless, in the ensuing decades, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their right to vote.]
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@William
Lol
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I would not even be mentioning these things had the Black people left George Washington alone. This country would not exist but for him. Many historians agree with this.
You have a point Jimmy. Many black people would not have been born had ol’ George not pumped his slaves who in turn bred children for him.
can say this about Barry Ebama. He is a supremely arrogant narcissist. He so often refers to himself one must wonder if he had a mirror installed over his bed at the White house so he sees himself first thing in the morning and the last thing at night.
Jimmy why are you so naive? All politicians from time immemorial are lying, sometimes thieving sacks of turd. Get over it Jimmy!
@Wayne, Jimmy’s running buddy:
You nothing but a white version of an Uncle Tom.
Unfortunately, you are full of fecal matter in this instance. There is no such thing as a ‘white Uncle Tom’, perhaps a John Brown comparison would be more apt? Carry on with the comedy you two!
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Most Whites are Uncle Toms, meaning that they are sell-outs to White supremacy and make excuses for it.
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Abagond, Hernieth, Sharinalr….they can call me whatever they want, it only reassures me that whatever it is I am doing is working. I strive every minute of every day to distance myself from people like them. However your inclusion is much appreciated….
If my heart and my views of the world are in direct opposition with EVIL then I am on the right path.
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BLACKS NEVER ASKED TO BE BROUGHT TO USA TO BE SLAVES. They also were not the major force in securing their freedom.
Inspit of what this racist author states… I don’t feel guility. My family was in Ireland!!
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@Will linden
That is TERRIFIC, GREAT!
Now, the next stage is to feel angry.
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abagond,
Your statement makes no sense at all. It is the same thing as saying Black Uncle Toms are sell outs to Black supremacy. OR…
the Farrakhans, the je$$e jack$ons, the al $harptons are sell outs to Black supremacy.
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Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“Your statement makes no sense at all.”—–Well then now you get the gist of how most of what you say makes no darn sense.
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Herneith,
Reread my post. I said nothing about lying politicians. Although the two words are interchangeable. I am only referring to Ebama’s obvious extreme ego-centric character.
Also, regarding the Father of this Country, I found this:
“”Did George Washington father a son with Venus, a young slave who lived on the estate of his half brother John Augustine Washington?
Three descendants of Venus’s son, who was called West Ford, say that according to a family tradition two centuries old, George Washington was West Ford’s father. They hope to develop DNA evidence from descendants of the Washington family and Washington’s hair samples to bolster their case.
Historians are skeptical, saying there is no documentary evidence to suggest that Washington ever met Venus, whose son was born four or five years before Washington became President, and several reasons to consider any such liaison improbable. In addition, Washington, 26 when he married Martha, then 27, had no children with her. But Martha bore four children in her first marriage, suggesting that Washington may have been sterile.
Yet there is reason to believe that if the child’s father was not Washington, it might have been someone closely related to him. The cousins’ claim has several elements of truth, enough to set up a historical mystery as to the identity of West Ford’s father and to add a new strand to the emerging links between the black and white sides of slave-owning families.””
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/07/us/descendants-of-slave-s-son-contend-that-his-father-was-george-washington.html
So, to make claims like you did is very inflammatory and deserves a rebuke!
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Once again the jokes is on you. If you read any of Herneith’s comments you will realize very quickly that her goal is and have been to mock you or any troll really. I think it is funny when such acts result in a whoosh.
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sharinalr.
“Well then now you get the gist of how most of what you say makes no darn sense.”
You must be confusing disagreement. I understand everything you say. I just disagree with most of it. But what he said, basically White people who support White supremacy are sell outs. As if Black people who support Black supremacy are noble? THAT, is confusing. Or dont y’all even get that?
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Even this simple comment went over your head. smh
“You must be confusing disagreement.”—It is not about disagreement at all dear. Nor is it a matter of whether you understand me in particular.
“But what he said, basically White people who support White supremacy are sell outs. As if Black people who support Black supremacy are noble? THAT, is confusing. Or dont y’all even get that?”—The mere fact that is requires me to explain this to me tells me you are either willfully obtuse or just plain have no clue. As such The illogic in what he says is equal to the illogic in much of what you say. It was as simple as that. You trying to point out his illogic to deflect from yours….hmm…Did you get that or did it go over your head again?
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Correction The mere fact this this requires that I explain this to you tells me that you are either willfully obtuse or just plainly has no clue.*
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Looks like I have a butt hurt stalker. So sad. 🙂
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Black Americans grievances with white American people throughout American history:
1. Slavery
2. Responsible for the death and murders that number into the millions.
3. 400 years of oppression.
4. Lynchings of the 19th and 20th centuries.
5. Burning of houses and churches in the 19th and 20th centuries..
6. KKK.
7. 2,000 white hate groups make up 90% of all hate groups.
8. Justice system disparity, including murder from trigger happy racist cops.
9. Inequality, including wage gap, poverty, etc.
10. Discrimination on all fronts of society.
11. Systematic segregation.
12. Civil rights.
13. Voter suppression.
14. Racial profiling.
15. Stereotyping.
16. White only schools, restaurants, bathrooms, jobs, etc…
White Americans grievances with Black people throughout history (mind you not all white people but relegated to mostly those white people with what today is known as conservative ideals):
1. ???.
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“2. Responsible for the death and murders that number into the millions.
3. 400 years of oppression.”
FAIL!! European countries bear the brunt of this. ONCE again… Only when the United States came into being in the year 1783. But then, what about those White Americans who came here in the 20th century.
And finally I will add this. In the stead of always kicking and screaming, fighting and struggling, why not leave and go back to an African country. Leastwise there, all y’all will be with friendlier folks who are much more accommodating than us. Else, y’all must like fighting and getting beaten.
As best I understand, it is the getting away from such oppression is why these United States population from 3rd worlders has exploded in these past 50 years.
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Jimmy…Okay Jimmy I concede you were able to find one grievance.
White Americans grievances with Black people throughout history
1. Black people are always like, complaining about being murdered, lynched, enslaved, oppressed, burned, profiled, suppressed…..and it’s like, Oh my God, so depressing Dude, it really makes us look like, really bad Dude.
Jimmy the white man has made it’s bed! So you either adapt, just like us whites have expected from all the people and their cultures we have destroyed through the years or you get out! There’s no turning back now Dog…
Or you could show just a bit of sympathy and see how we can move past this lingering oppression and racism at power levels in our society. Because the chance of this country ever becoming the all white, Imperialist supreme fourth Reich you conservatives have wet dreams about fall somewhere between when pigs fly and snowballs in Hell.
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I said nothing about what you said I said. And it is still true. If things are so terrible here, why not leave. That is exactly what millions of others have done when they decided to come here. Things were terrible where they were. So according to you, William, they should go back to force change, right? After all, that is what you people are trying to do here, right? FORCE change? Then all those other immigrants, both legal and illegal, should go back to force their country’s to change according to their point of view? OR…
If they are right to leave their countries because of how terrible it was, where they had no chance to succeed, and since you people seem to think that is how it is here, leave! Go where you can all get along and sing kum bah ya.
HOWEVER, you asked something. And after all my postings will surely make most here think I am lying here, I am not.
I am sympathetic towards oppressed peoples. But neither am I going to grovel afore them the way some here do. I shall not stick my face to their backsides just to show/prove I am on their side. I think it a crime, a sin, to make it easy for folks to stay poor by having hard working people hand over their hard earned cash. I think it righteous to teach people how to succeed. How to play the game. And there are loads of success stories in this country of all stripes and colours. Teaching them HOW to succeed is showing them sympathy. NOT doing the Trent Lott crawl. THAT is degrading.
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Jimmy…..So this is what you call sympathy for the American slavery holocaust?
“Fair is fair, tat for tit.”
You would make a statement that if Blacks change the name of a school that a white man should do something equal to that. If tit for tat played out then Blacks would be in power and should enslave whites, rape whites, oppress whites, lynch whites, etc…For the tyrant to say that all should be fair after 400 years of appalling treatment regarding something as insignificant as the name of a school is ignorant.
“Leastwise there, all y’all will be with friendlier folks who are much more accommodating than us. Else, y’all must like fighting and getting beaten.”
This is some really compassionate sympathetic stuff here Jimmy, you must be a saint. 500 men are murdered each year by cops and you make them out to be sadist.
“This man pretty much summed it up. Either it were or it werent. Bad masters? Good masters? YES, very relevant.”
You minimized the Black mans experience of being a slave by pointing out Good Masters and Bad Masters. How ARROGANT is it of you, a white man, to tell Black people that slavery was, “not all that bad”, there were good masters. How do you know if there were any good masters, because a white man wrote it somewhere? Thats not proof that is conjecture, heresay, not proof. Although it is illogical to think there weren’t better masters, the key point of this blog is to address racism and for a white man to tell Black people that slavery was also GOOD or it wasn’t that bad….Is not sympathy, it’s RACIST!
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MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
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@Jimmy
The same to you. 🙂
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So, to make claims like you did is very inflammatory and deserves a rebuke!
On the contrary Jimmy. I think George was a great man once you get beyond his wooden dentures! The fact he was out pumping all sorts of women makes him all the more alluring. Why on earth Jimmy, would slave owners document the slave women they had assignations with much less any ensuing offspring? At least the men were more manly back then!
But then, what about those White Americans who came here in the 20th century.
What about them? Lets continue talking about George’s virility. How about speculating about the number of slave children he sired. Oh, maybe he and Martha never got the groove on as it were. Child bearing was dangerous in those days. Perhaps she wanted a husband like George who was busy pumping his slave instead of her. Oh and the social respectability to be maintained.
Else, y’all must like fighting and getting beaten.
As best I understand, it is the getting away from such oppression is why these United States population from 3rd worlders has exploded in these past 50 years.
No Jimmy, they were and are sold a load of crap!
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
You’re joking, right?
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As did whites, and they still are.. And?
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Whites use “slavery” to stigmatize blacks and attach shame to us,seriously during the advent of the american slave trade 2/3 rds of the planet were slaves . Most of europe were in servitude and came to the americas to escape that. Most of the world today is in servitude but somehow the illogical rhetoric of white supremacy suggests that slavery was exclusive to blacks which is patently absurd . A l’epoch (during the advent of the american slave trade) 98% of russia were slaves and had 0 hope of escaping that, the cultural/racial designation “slav” means SLAVE. Please stop.
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Thoko— quote the opposite. Whites make the case that whites too were slaves, to try to stop Blacks from using slavery to perpetuate victim hood for political reasons. Since almost all people on earth were slaves, they argue it’s ludicrous to constantly refert to 250 year old slavery as an excuse for all of their woes
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First of all we are speaking of recent slavery in the Americas and what became the United States. If you want to talk about slavery in Ireland or Russia and how Russia and Ireland have one of the worse economies in the world with a history of death, destruction and poverty, then I suggest you start your own blog about how OPPRESSED your people are or were, better yet move to Russia but we live in the U.S., where people of color are NOT treated fairly and who the very people our country and our citizens enslaved, brutalized, oppress, etc…are STILL the most oppressed, poorest, most jailed, most murdered by cops, most profiled, most discriminated against, etc.. So even though we feel for all people who have felt the evil, unhuman results of slavery, there is not one single incident of past slavery that has a continued effect in these United States as did the enslavement of our Black Americans…FACT! This is a blog that covers racism in the United States of America and in some cases abroad. Most of the racism or ambiguous systematic oppression comes from the white superior arrogant culture that began many years ago, although it has lessened, it still exist today. Would you ever tell a combat soldier that he/she is exaggerating about their experiences in war if you have no war experience yourself, NO. The same policy should hold true for those of you who have never experienced racism, oppression or systematic disregard by the status quot, you expose your ignorance when you speak for others or disregard their real life experiences regarding the white arrogant culture we live in, all the facts are there.
Lets get some FACTS straight as well. Slavery ended 150 years ago, however NONE of the other dehumanizing laws and treatment did not get repealed or changed until just 50 years ago. Those men and women who lived during those years are still fairly young and those men who created or took advantage of those laws still live today as well. So you may want to distance yourself and your country from such evil but by trying to do such a thing you are taking a chance at repeating such atrocities and instead you should learn from the past and accept that your country and our culture is not perfect but young, not evil but learning, not superior but diverse and tolerant of each other….
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Jesus, this subject was worn out ages ago!
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My people suffer a cooler mission today for which the past can’t speak so why continue to dig more horror with history blood has shed enough I know fair and right is what we seek but hate is not our key we know we’re not the fault but also can not pastorfy ourselves like we can’t be accountible for today we don’t make perfect in this either
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http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/41431
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@hawgdawger
As usual with amateur historical claims makers, you are babbling about ‘slavery’ rather than addressing the actual subject of any serious analysis of the question this discussion string is really about–The Corporate Trans Atlantic Triangle Slave Trade and the late mercantilist and early capitalist economics of that Trade.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself for posting a link to something as openly pandering of Anglo approval, as logically sclerotic, alzheimeresque, and as intellectually challenged as The History Channel. Once, long ago, The History Channel had just a bit of intellectual and historiographic legitimacy, but it has long since cast up its skirts and tossed away its mortarboard to put the make on audience bigotry as it has degenerated into the Big Mac and fries of historical sources–in other words, it is not a source at all…
…And most of the university-affiliated scholars who get published on their website or cited in their in-house TV productions are the bird seed pop mentality leftovers after the better scholars are weeded out by the editors of the channel and the page. This is WIDELY known among my fellow legitimate academic scholars, I assure you. You have proven the wisdom of my always referring to The History Channel as “The Tony Soprano Channel” (Tony loves to veg-out in front of his expensive flat screen TV with the movie theater sense-around projection speakers watching pseudo history channel crap and eating Sfogliatelle (“svu-ya-dell”).
Let me review a portion of the article from Tony’s Channel that you seem to want those of us who have been sharing valid sources and doing real analyses on this post for two years to read and I suppose get born again as pop thinkers rather than critical thinkers, then let me write you a little analysis that will crush it. Here’s the most dumb portion of your generally historically dumb link:
“Website readers must understand that this terrible traffic in millions of human beings had been, as affirmed by the PBS Africans in America series, a joint venture: “During this era, Africans and Europeans stood together as equals, companions in commerce and profit. Kings exchanged respectful letters across color lines and addressed each other as colleagues. Natives of the two continents were tied into a common economy.”2
Incomplete depictions of the Atlantic slave trade are, in fact, quite common. My 2003 study of 49 state U.S. history standards revealed that not one of these guides to classroom content even mentioned the key role of Africans in supplying the Atlantic slave trade.3 In Africa itself, however, the slave trade is remembered quite differently. Nigerians, for example, explicitly teach about their own role in the trade
– See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/41431#sthash.AOPI6Vf5.dpuf”
No. You get me? N-O.
There are not enough people actively saying NO to this kind of pop history (just as we ought to also so no to the more and more widespread pop science and pop psychology being disseminated in American culture lately, Global warming is real, there is no such thing as a gene for Black crime, and Africans, Arabs, and Jews did NOT ‘stand in solidarity and equal profit’ or anything like that with ‘Europeans’ in the running of the Corporate, TransAtlantic Triangle Slave Trade. WARNING: I am not a sophist or a ‘debater’ who tries to use propaganda and pop argumentation to score ‘points’ or convince anyone of anything, so you are going to have to actually READ what I am about to say, and if you are not ‘convinced; I couldn’t care less. The point is simply to counter your pop source with some real analysis, so that when you go on repeating incipiently racist misinformation (yes, even when dumb sources and dumb academics are BLACK the effect of their dumbness can definitely be racist) you at least won’t be able to claim you were left in the dark without ever having been exposed to something more valid and more sound.
I have posted this historical analysis within this discussion string before, and so have others who read this post regularly, so I suspect that one reason you have posted such weak arguments here of all places is because like too many people who stumble into this discussion you want to sound off without having first READ THE WHOLE SITE and the HISTORY OF COMMENTS ON THIS TOPIC WITHIN THIS STRING. So, if that is the case and you are simply being lax, I am in a real sense doing you a favor here:
“The Trade” had one origin, one intention, and one function only: multinational sale of human flesh for the sake of primitive accumulation (an economic term for ‘seed money’) and surplus value (an economic term for the worth produced by workers–that is, labor in excess of Labor’s cost in maintenance and in wages) achieved through capital accumulation and workforce accumulation in the name of massive surplus profit (an economic term for monopolistic super profit over and above investment), enough ‘super-profit’ to fund the rise of a new European power structure on the heels of the gradually weakening monarchy; enough super-profit in fact to raise Europe from it’s third place global standing (behind Asia and Arabia-North Africa) and place Her, through the eventuality of the colonial period that followed and was enabled by the slave trade era, at the head of nations, able to eventually institute a long reign of colonial domination and theft in Africa, Asia, India, and the New World as well as Latin America.
“From Columbus to Castro” by Eric Williams, is the gold standard of historical scholarship on the subject at hand. You ought to read it, first among another ten or twenty books you ought to read before you dare to post anything else on the topics you are babbling about. Due to Williams’ astounding attention to detail, it is not possible for the reader to go on clinging to the common myths and lies about The Trade, nor about early capitalism. The Trade was not aberrant, it was wholly representative of the mainstream of the European ruling classes, its major institutions, and its mercantile paradigms. Business, industrial production, and primitive accumulation were activities that left behind many official, military, and public as well as private records. As with the 20th century Jewish Holocaust four hundred years later in Germany, Poland, and the rest of Europe, the 16th century Triangle Slave Trade left us hundreds of thousands of these documents, and so we know precisely what motivations were involved, what charter companies profited, what actions were taken, and by whom.
You might wish read or to simply look through the introduction of “Columbus to Castro” and look again at Chapter 7–“The Cockpit of Europe”, paying close attention to Williams’ mention of the details of sugar plantations, business transactions, and the specifics of global economics and Europe’s economic dependence on slavery. Given current global economic realities with regard to the world monetary system, it is quite clear, as I have just asserted, that the Triangle Slave Trade was not an aberration, just as Cedric J. Robinson and Robin D.G. Kelley argue in their text, Black Marxism (P. 200). Nor was it a peculiar irruption of so-called ‘racist’ abuse or of mistaken, monarchist fiat riding upon the back of Columbus’ missionary zeal as an ‘explorer’ who ‘discovered’ a paradise that was ‘unused’ or ‘undeveloped’. It has been presented as any number or combination of these things, yet was none of these in essence.
To be sure, slavery was aberrant; was indeed a project that gave rise to and was very much enabled by a seemingly racist ideology. Perhaps one of the roots of this later ideology was an earlier ideology of religious conquest that used military means: crusader-ism by European powers invading and conquering various city-states in Arab North Africa (what we call in present day the ‘middle east’). The ideology of invasion and conquest followed by theft, was part-and-parcel of a larger, monarchist/colonialist adventurism and of a well-documented Christian missionary, Crusaders’ project. However, the slave trade in its conception, execution, and objective effect, was an economic fait accompli after the empowerment by charter of proto-corporations such as British East India Company. It’s values and its ideology were also, I argue, a flash forward to present day Corporate Realism, and to a wholly modernist, corporate expression of capitalism’s earliest long range intentions (to subsume and to replace the Monarchy, to do the same to the bourgeoisie, to replace the state, and to reanimate the functions of monarchy under the guise of a new, corporate manifestation of the ‘Divine Right of Kings’–what we might call now ‘The Divine Rights of Corporate Boards of Directors.”
It should not be necessary to say that African ‘Kings’ did not sit on the mercantilist boards of early capitalist proto-corporations like British East not sit in the councils of the Roman Catholic Curia, which shared profits and gain with monarchist and mercantilist European slave ship builders and entrepreneurs. Neither did Arabs, and Jews did so chiefly as fronts for monarchists and for corporate Dutch power brokers who wanted to appear to have clean hands and to hide their participation on the filthy industry of trade in human flesh.
On pages 13-17, Williams details the earliest European involvement in an already existing African slave trade that had gone on both in the African interior and in North Africa. The first European nation to engage to great degree in the buying and shipping or simply the transport of slaves, was Portugal which explored, attacked, and roamed the west coast of Africa from 1435-1481. It was Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer who, some years before Columbus, circumnavigated West Africa and the Cape of Good Hope to reach the far side of the continent—the East Coast, and thus open up the eastward version of the much desired sea route to India (Columbus’ innovation of course, was to be the first to propose sailing WEST to reach India through circumnavigation of the Earth).
As you have will have read if you consult more serious historical sources, what Columbus was able to bring to bear against the natives of the ‘New’ World were three historically transformative forces, along with slave labor and mass production made possible with slave labor, that would help all of Europe not only to later invade Africa, seize the slave trade from the Arabs, and spread war across West Africa, but also allowed Europe to conquer the ‘Indies’ (the Caribbean):
The three transformative forces that would function to advance Europe to a strategic position of dominance over Africa and Asia and then th New World were the printing press, gun powder, and the magnetic compass (Williams, P.14 and P. 32). As Williams shows, the result was the birth of the Corporation, and thus a historical ‘wave’ of paradigm shift, technological shift, and industrialism (mass production, and most important a mass production mentality that could be turned to even political and cultural practices). All of these paradigm shits and forces made the ‘Columbian Age’ inevitable, made it as I said, a ‘fait accompli’.
The Triangle Slave Trade was carried on under an imprimatur of government granted charters, and it was the intention of those charter companies to do what the word ‘corporation’ after all frankly announces (i.e., the Latin stem corpus + the derivational affix, ation): to ‘incorporate’ is to ‘embody’, to become physiogamic and to become physical, to personify, to become a person as free of the king and of the state as the erstwhile mercantilist once sought to be; and ultimately the word clearly meant to become free of The State that had replaced the king, the electorate that limits the actions of The State, and the law that limits the dealings of the corporation.
In 1600, The Trade embodied all of these realities while also looking far ahead to later, capitalist realities. Its history is an ironic one in that the slave trade can now be seen to be, from the vantage of historical distance, the penultimate model for current, 21st century Corporate Realism. The Triangle Slave Trade was one of the largest, most lucrative endeavors in the history of the world, but most notably in the history of capitalism (for it was capitalism’s very first seed money activity).
The twin myths that African ‘kings’ sold the millions of a continent’s stolen souls into the horror of the Trans-Atlantic Industry, and that ‘racism’ is the raison d’être for this immense and systematic industry, which grew to be known as ‘the slave trade,’ are persistent and pernicious not to mention quite dull-witted myths founded upon and working to further historical ignorance. They are persistent and pernicious in the way that only American mythologies can or can dare to be: persistent in that both are only incidentally rooted in truth or that they touch upon some kernel of truth; pernicious in the way that American myth always resolutely performs slight-of-hand, changes the subject of a critique, and buries deeper complexity while flattening out context in an attempt to divert critique, to fashion narratives pleasing to the orthodoxy of the collective American mind, or simply to fashion another mindless slogan or jingle for consumption and for advertising’s sake. What often gets ‘advertised’ is the ‘commodity’ of Western rationalism, Western humanism, manifest destiny, and American (Western) Exceptionalism. See an excellent Wikipedia article on American Exceptionalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
As to the first myth, even if we will not go into great detail here, we will point out as we have considered before, that although slavery existed on the African continent prior to the Trans-Atlantic Trade, as it had existed in most world cultures, and indeed existed in Europe prior to the slave trade, we need to look specifically at Portugal as the very first European power to engage in what would become the Trans Atlantic Industry of slavery. Though ancient Rome and other classical civilizations had of course earlier engaged in trans national theft and transport of slaves and though Rome in fact is first of the actual classical sources of the ‘corporation’, though the Arab and Muslim peoples had long traded with Europe, and meanwhile had engaged in an interior African slave trade, there is a crucial history of Portuguese activity in Africa and Spanish activity in the Indies (Williams, Pages 18-29) that led up to the modern European Trans-Atlantic industry that it is necessary to examine in order to understand the roots of the capitalist forms arising out of the European industry, and its nature.
The Portuguese lacked safe land routes over North Africa due to the disruption and hostilities stirred up by The Crusades, though for 800 years Muslims had journeyed across the Sahara to trade with Europe and presumably also had free access to India from bases on Africa’s east coast. The Portuguese in the latter part of the 15th century, in any event, engaged in excursions, trade, violence, and finally slave transactions down the Atlantic coast of The Continent to Guinea, and Mauritania, across the Sahara, and through Senegal and Gambia, seeking gold, ivory, pepper, and spices at first, and then seeking citizens to take into slavery. In the process, the Portuguese had to trade with, deal with, and make alliances with a Muslim empire in the north.
This Portuguese activity stretched from 1430-1500 and beyond. Only scant markets existed for African slaves to be sold in Europe, and only a few were used as free labor on Mediterranean sugar plantations, but the Portuguese made lucrative business of transporting slaves from trading post to trading post and became therefore a utility for Muslim traders along The Continent’s Atlantic coast. Those of the Muslim merchants so inclined wanted slaves to sell. By 1470 Portuguese slavers had reached as far south as the Benin under-coast, and were bringing with them horses, copper, wine, firearms, and ammunition. They sought and achieved, large payments in gold in return for their service to the Muslim empire, for the Muslims had engaged in a purely African slave trade for some two hundred years prior to Portuguese activities along the coast (in fact, the nature of the Muslim slave trade was directed principally at acquiring ‘pack’ slaves; mostly dark skinned Africans to be used as pack animals would have been—to carry goods and wares for their Muslim masters along trade routes. Muslims used slaves also as body servants, and for the full spectrum of involuntary servitude—from war spoils to captive servants, to indentured servants, to temporary and lifelong bondage—existed among Muslim slavers.)
This arrangement lasted until the end of the 15th century, but by 1500, the dawn of the Renaissance, of the rise of mercantilism, and of the rise of corporate power, Vasco Núńez da Gama had circumnavigated the entire African Atlantic coast, sailing around the “Cape of Good Hope” to the Indian Ocean and a sea route to India (1486, actually, had been the year that Bartholomew Diaz first circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope. But it was da Gama who sailed all the way to India, in the year 1498, to open a new trade route to the Far East, creating a new source of Portuguese wealth). By the early 1500’s Portugal had trading posts not only along the Atlantic coast of Africa, but also along the South Eastern coasts, in India, in China, in Japan, and in the so-called ‘East Indies’. Meanwhile sugar plantations had been established in the Cape Verde and Canary Islands, and Columbus had made several voyages between Europe and the new world. Accordingly, Portuguese business affairs drastically changed, veering toward greater and greater emphasis upon trade in flesh, for in the year 1500 the Portuguese had already bought, captured, or bartered with the Muslims for 81,000 slaves to supply the burgeoning Portuguese sugar plantations, which were thriving in a brand new Columbian (colonial) age.
What has always been obfuscated about African history, geography, and politics are the facts that: 1.There is no such country as ‘Africa’, for Africa is not a homogeneous state, nor was it so in the 15th and 16th centuries. 2. The history of the ‘trade’ is demonstrably a case of a trans-global trade for the Portuguese, the British, Spain, and other Europeans, but of local political and economic necessity or profit for agents of slavers on The Continent. Thus,
1. The word, ‘Africa’ is a misnomer. In the words of Nobel Prize laureate, Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, “Africa is not a country but a continent, and upon that continent both in pre Columbian and post Columbian times, there existed and still exists, not one nation, but an absolute diversity of nations, kingdoms, regions, and states.” One can imagine how this very heterogeneity (diversity of languages, cultures, beliefs, and traditions) upon The Continent must have contributed to the relative ease by which European colonizers divided and conquered African people(s) during the colonialist period that followed hard upon the heels of the era of the trans-Atlantic trade.
It is therefore crucial to ask, which ‘Africans’ are being referred to by amateur historians? It is in no way rational for instance, to describe ‘Europeans’ in an unqualified sense as having ‘run the slave trade’, for Europe is not an undifferentiated continent with a common history, language, or political heritage. As we have shown, Spain, which is in Europe, was an African kingdom, and then an African colony and annex for approximately 800 years. Portugal, not Britain, as is commonly assumed, was first to initiate mass transportation of slaves away from The Continent, while some other of the European nations did not engage in the trans-Atlantic trade at all, but rather entered Africa in earnest and in violence only after the start of the colonial period (1700-1970, roughly), and were colonizers, not slavers, per se, from the 17th and 18th century incursions of the British and the French military in North Afrika, to the totalitarian rule of the Dutch in South Africa, and the horrors of King Leopold and the Belgians in the Congo region. Scholar, Oscar L. Beard, in Atlanta, writes that,
The period from the beginning of the TransAtlantic African Slave so-called Trade (1500) to the demarcation of Africa into colonies in the late 1800s is one of the most documented periods in World History. Yet, with the exception of the renegade African slave raider Tippu Tip of the Congo (Muslim name, Hamed bin Muhammad bin Juna al-Marjebi) who was collaborating with the White Arabs (also called Red Arabs) there is little documentation of independent African slave raiding.
By independent is meant [that an ‘independent’ situation would one in which] there were no credible threats, intoxicants or use of force by Whites to force or deceive the African into slave raiding or slave trading and that the raider himself was not enslaved to Whites at the time of slave raiding or “trading”. Trade implies human-to-human mutuality without force. This was certainly not the general scenario for the TransAtlantic so-called Trade in African slaves. Indeed, it was the Portuguese who initiated the European phase of slave raiding in Africa by attacking a sleeping village in 1444 and carting away the survivors to work for free in Europe. (Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery?, by Oscar L. Beard, retrievable at http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/145.html)
In the wake of Columbus’ exposing of the potential agricultural wealth of the ‘New World,’ the Portuguese were not as interested in spices as they were in human flesh, and so inaugurated the eventual, historically unprecedented kidnapping of millions. The Atlantic Slave Trade had commenced. Even where the Portuguese are concerned, their activities as slavers prior to the Columbian period is distinct from their activities as slavers after, for:
2. The ‘trade’ after Columbus became something unique to the prior history of slavery in both Africa and Europe; that is, it became a corporate, globalized, massified industry. Mass production, mass purchase, mass processing, and mass transit were all the elements of eventual Taylorism (Fordist mass production, characteristic of the coming industrial revolution and characteristic of the soon-to-come genocide against Congolese by Belgium and genocide against Jews by Germany) that would signify mature capitalism. If the Portuguese were mercantilist slavers before the Columbian era, they were capitalists after, and so were the European nations that followed Portugal in the trade.
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@hawgdawger:
Of course, for all my preceding verbiage, William the C. has already said what is most crucial of all to remember: slavery ended more than a hundred years ago, yet none of the structures, forms, or effects of it have YET ended.
And if I may quote another insightful commentator here, Sherent Deen: “Jesus, this subject was worn out ages ago!”
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@ hawgdawger:
One of my students just pointed out to me that I was mistaken about your link to ‘The History Channel’–you actually were using “History News Network”, a well known conservative site associated with George Mason University. My student had written up a critique of HNN earlier this semester, and had pronounced it ‘fallacious’. My student was correct.
So I have to apologize to The History Channel, because THC has NEVER been as lame as HNN is, or at least as HNN is usually used–anti intellectual, reactionary, and simply knee jerk conservative commentators use a series of pseudo legitimate sources when they want to make their mistaken takes on history, politics, economics, or popular issues seem as if they have actually done research and as if their are real sources they can site The Washington Times, History News Network, World Net Daily, The Heritage Foundation, The Weekly Standard, and Outside the Beltway are just a few of these fronts for emotional, reactionary, anti-historical, and conservative commentators such as those who argue that there is no global warming or that Africans sold their own people.
I have actually attacked the HNN before on this very blog for being a front for anti-intellectualism. My apologies to The History Channel for insulting that network by mistaking HNN for them. The History Channel is just pop culture infotainment and recently veering toward being lame, it’s not a total hoax cited constantly by reactionaries from Rush Limbaugh ti Bill O’Reilly, as HNN is. Also, the History Channel was once a legitimate source for analysis. HNN never, never, never, never has been.
Hey, even scholars make errors and have to apologize.
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Reblogged this on mauriceparrishblog.
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Rayfield Waller,
It seems to me as I have followed along, that you give no legitimacy to any person or any book, or any source that espouses a different story than yours, or a contradictory story, other than yours. It appears you dont cotton to disagreement very well, so they must be, HAVE to be wrong. Why is that, sir?
Has there never been an occasion where you and someone disagreed, on this topic here – free running for a couple of years now – without calling them just plain wrong? Have you never said, simply, “Then we must agree to disagree”? OR, is this a gliberal/marxist/communist thing, that if you dont agree with me, you are wrong!
I for one allow that there are differing points of view when it comes to history. Like you people here. Y’all only see history from the prism of Karl Marx and communism, which is the eternal class warfare argument. I get that. And I understand y’alls argument, and also allow there is some validity to that. BUT, I disagree for the most part of this basicness of the human struggle. Things are far more complex than that. Just like the canard that the Southern Independence War was “fought over slavery” ONLY. Just as the human struggle is complex, so are the conflicts that cause war.
Capice?
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Jimmy,
you have to cut black people some slack for our ignorance of the more sophisticated, complex politics surrounding the formation and operation of the United States of America; especially when dealing with the Civil War.
Tariffs, federalism, central banking, common law, protestantism… we don’t discuss these very important concepts among ourselves because its a luxury reserved for those people who have first been able to carve out a tiny space where they are free enough from mistreatment based on color to be able to focus on these larger philosophical ideas.
Race and racism are “short cuts” we use to get to what is most important to us and to a lessor extent, justify our failures.
We aren’t the only ones who do it. Koreans employ a similar strategy of blaming the Japanese for their failures the way we blame white people for ours (see “comfort women”)
Being a slave, a servant, a serf… has always been quite normal. During the Roman empire Roman citizens sold themselves into slavery to get out from under the burden of crushing taxes and serving as soldiers in military campaigns far from Rome.
“Freedom” was a precarious existence and to a certain extent, still is; hence the necessity for Harriet Tubman to free some slaves at gunpoint.
Look around?
Even today more and more people support bigger and more intrusive government.
The average person in a democracy has no problem voting themselves back into slavery; first through socialism, then through communism.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
It is not a matter of if you disagree with someone you are wrong. It is a matter in your case of you trying to make a piece of the puzzle fit that does not. Not to mention that people disagreeing is equivalent to you repeatedly calling a disagreeance a “liberal/marxist/communist thing”. You seem to ramble on about what you do rather than what anyone else seems to do to you.
Of course life is complex and situations are complex, but you try to simply explain it away with nonsense and want people to accept it at face value. For example the topic of slaves being set free or being allowed to work as a regular occurrence. No one denied this happened but you felt a few stories made it common place. Using that history can be interpreted babble to excuse away your obvious lack of knowledge in certain areas.
Not to mention your repeated argument of they did it too (which was a duh moment I am sure). Bottom line is you want to argue that a person is wrong and when you were shown or proven to be wrong then you chose to whine and complain. You come back regularly to do just that. With an inflated opinion and no sources.
Opinions are like a***holes. Everybody has one. Now go clean yours and move on. IF not it is open mic night.
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Capice?
Nope.
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@Herneith
Well I DO Capice.
I understand only too bloody well, because I’ve seen and heard and read you before, when you used to call yourself Lucius Cornelius Sulla of the Roman Republic; and then when you were Andrew Breitbart. At one time you were calling yourself George Wallace, right? Wasn’t it at one point (when you became Black) Condolezza Rice? Different genders and races, different personae, same old tired ass arguments and avoidance of the intellectual rigor required to address any and every subject at hand (in this case, Africans selling their own into slavery), right?
So prithee say: where do YOU stand on the actual SUBJECT of this discussion string my friend? Do you wish to argue that Africans sold their own people into slavery? What did they get in return? Did they fully participate in the global PROFIT, primitive accumulation, resulting colonial global power, and surplus economic value of The Trade? Were the Arabs and Jews you no doubt also erroneously want to argue were part of The Trade, set up for eventual global domination like some mercantile Europeans were (the ‘Elders of Zion’ and the HAMAS Party don’t count as evidence, and bear in mind that the Holocaust and the Crusades of the past and present seem to argue against claims of Arab and Jewish corporate power)?
Who WERE these ‘Africans’ who ‘sold’ their own, by the way, and most importantly, exactly what in the hell was ‘Africa’ in the 16th and 17th centuries, anyway? It was a continent, like Europe was, wasn’t it? Or was it once a great big eleven million square mile city? A continent size fishing village? A great big Negro settlement somewhere south of the Sahara?
Or was it a fig Newton of Roman general Scipio’s imagination?
Capice?
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According to your view on this page , it is entirely the white mans fault that blacks in Africa were sold , held or traded . Typical attitude of blacks today! Slavery is part of world history ! Blacks themselves hold a certain responsibility in the slave trade throughout history ! I’m not buying your propaganda !
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@ Ernest Gavin
Whites were not ENTIRELY at fault, but they were MAINLY at fault.
Those African and Arabs who took part in the slave trade are not off the hook, of course, that should go without saying, but given the industrial scale of the transatlantic slave trade, it is dishonest to think that Whites were not MAINLY at fault.
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Ernest
Isn’t it amazing how you chastise abagond on Your idea that he is blaming whites entirely for slavery, yet have no qualms trying to claim what you think is typical black ideas?
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Typical attitude of blacks today!
What is typical? What are you on about?
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@ Herneith:
First of all, you are, whatever else you may be, a racial essentialist, meaning you cannot pull your head out of the posterior of the ideology of the myth of race long enough to see that “Race” is NOT REAL, but was created by slave traders and capitalists in the 16th century– you are an unenlightened Anglo, or else a Black person who is just as unenlightened as an Anglo (at least the Anglo is trying, failing but trying, to protect his or her own historically false pride; what are Colored Anglos doing? IMITATING that foolishness?
I say this about you not to insult you but because I note that back on April 21, 2013, you wrote to a fellow writer posting here whom you happened to disagree with that she should–
“Put it to music and play it on the violin. I could not care less as to how you feel. That song Cry me a River comes to mind. As for that article, it describes you and your colour-blind racist ilk to a tee. You must be Canadian! You read like one of those white Canadians.”
Enough about you, Herneith, except to say I’d love to get you in a room full of real scholars and a few enlightened Canadians for a serious debate–I’d strip the fallacies right off you and make you eat them.
@ All who keep thinking this string is about ‘blaming’ so-called ‘White’ people :
In fact, there are no such THINGS as ‘White’ people, as I have frequently proven here. Well, if you can stand the sheer repetition of it I don’t mind being horribly redundant–you would seem to need to suffer through this over and over again, from January, 2013:
” Just to take two of the most egregious [fallacies so common here], you [reactionaries and people just plain ignorant of history] are wrong first of all to say that Africans are being presented by Abagond as somehow ‘not as bad’ as Europeans. You set up a straw man with Abagond’s point for your own convenience with that distortion of his argument.
He is precisely arguing, by the implication of his quite lucid [analysis], that Europeans are NOT ‘bad’; there IS no ‘bad’ or ‘good’ or ‘better African slavery’ or ‘worse European slavery’ in Abagond’s analysis. He (or she, I’m not certain) is doing an ECONOMIC and MATERIAL analysis not of ‘slavery’ (which you accurately point out is universal, and was African, Roman, Greek, Persian, Asian, and as far as we know, even Neanderthal), but of the Corporate Transatlantic Slave Trade, and it’s transformation of global human culture, a detrimental transformation, I myself would add, and one whose pernicious influence on human development has lasted for four hundred years. The invention of ‘race’ is only one of the results of this pernicious influence. You are wrong in your noodling reflections to the effect of racism being just another extension of demonized ‘otherness’ and thus concluding that the racism of the slave trade was coextensive with the ‘otherness’ of African cultures that practiced taking slaves. ‘African Otherness’ did not found the largest, longest, and most globally distorting force in human history—corporate capitalism, which is second in implication and scope only to WAR itself as a human activity that has dictated the flawed course of the human race and the human condition.
Which leads to your second major fallacy: that capitalism (as you wrongly claim about the corporate slavery that was the Transatlantic Trade) was trans-cultural, or trans-human, emerging with some degree of simultaneity or perhaps of equivalency. This idea of The Trade and all its attendant ills (national-to-global expropriation as an industry, industrialized genocide, of the Taino, the Arawak, and the Caribe peoples of the New World, for example, and eventual global colonialism that contributed to Europe’s primitive accumulation) is patently false, and CANNOT in fact be true given the nature and origin of capitalism. For instance, prior to The Global Trade, human history offered up three ways one would become a slave: 1. Due to losing a war; 2. As the result of a debt, and 3. Fiat (the whim of some king, Pope, Duke, Chieftain, warlord, or Khan). As respondents here mention, every culture throughout time has practiced slavery. However, the difference that The Trade introduced was the mechanization, mass-quantification, and industrialization leading to globalized profit that provided primitive accumulation and world dominance not for Africans, or Arabs, (or even Europeans!), but for the companies that began by trading tea, evolved into wretched traders of human flesh, and ended in the power to invade and oppress Africa, Asia, and India (while they retarded and distorted the development even of Europe!)
Like many of the fallacy laden thinkers Abagond is aiming at, you are describing MERCANTILISM and MARKET ECONOMY when you talk of cultural equivalencies, but the subject is not market economy, it is CORPORATE capitalism. Corporations were born as a result of the Transatlantic Trade, not the other way around. Early Capitalism as a true market theory of economics existed approximately fifty years after the end of market economics driven mercantilism before Early Capitalism too, was eviscerated by the hegemony of the charter corpus-company. Early capitalism was transformed into something that, ironically, strove against markets, against market development, exchange, diversity, competition, individual freedom, and against all the innovations we associate with FREE markets that had been characteristic of mercantilism’s own most profound impact on human development: the weakening of monarchy, the end of feudalism, the freeing of human innovation, and the empowerment of Europe’s most significant contribution to world culture, as incipiently expressed by the political innovation of Ancient Athenian democracy: individualism and human rights.
You see, what you totally miss is that you are shouting inside a much, much bigger box than you seem to know, which is why you fail to appreciate what Abagond’s greater, larger argument is: ‘Africans’ did not sell themselves into the TRIANGLE SLAVE TRADE and neither did Arabs sell them into it, since the slave trade was corporate, not cultural. Profits were corporate, not national (neither Africa, NOR Europe had any true ‘national’ identity, and the early corporations strove to keep it that way and to keep both populations divided and underdeveloped for the sake of power, control, and profit). Simply put, it was not “Europe” or “Whites” that or who were responsible for The Trade, since the corporations born out of The Trade were not acting in the name of Europe, or Europeans, but in unison with Europeans’ enemies: The Catholic Church, the monarchs, and the landed, hereditary gentry, all of whom had been placed at RISK of EXTINCTION by actual capitalism-mercantilism and by the invention of Guttenberg’s western version of the Asian printing press and the advance of literacy following The Bubonic Plague and feudal barbarism.
The Slave Trade was about economics, not ‘race.’ ‘Race’ is a myth anyway, as French philosopher Roland Barthes has argued. Race itself is a red herring, and was used as such BY the embryonic corporations, (Dutch East India and British East India companies among them—the same companies whose anti-market control, pseudo-military domination, and political totalitarianism via their monopolies and charter powers granted by monarchs, provoked the American colonists to rebel against England). That same despotism, supported by The Church, the kings, and the Old Dispensation of ruling classes, also led, with their support, to two hundred years of rape and expropriation of natural resources from Africa, India, and Asia–the crimes of colonialism. The primitive accumulation that these companies and the enabling ruling classes of the European nations achieved through slave labor on a global scale, is what provided the seed money for the eventual creation of a global European (as in corporate) supremacy—‘White’ supremacy, if you wish.
…maybe you ought to read a few [books]. Reading is fundamental. Try “From Columbus to Castro” by Eric Williams for a start. Than try “The Influence of Oversea Expansion on England to 1700” by J.E. Gillespie. Try also, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney and follow that up with “How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America,” by Dr. Manning Marable, for some economic understanding of why ‘race’ is not the force behind so-called ‘white’ supremacy— capitalism is. Race is merely a McGuffin.”
-Professor Ray Waller January 2013, Wayne State University, Detroit
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An interesting back-and-forth betwixt Waller and Herneith.
But what I am now perplexed about is Waller’s assertion, ““Race” is NOT REAL, but was created by slave traders and capitalists in the 16th century– you are an unenlightened Anglo, or else a Black person who is just as unenlightened as an Anglo (at least the Anglo is trying, failing but trying, to protect his or her own historically false pride; what are Colored Anglos doing? IMITATING that foolishness?”
How can race not be real? Differing race’s of man has existed for almost so long as man has. I have no resource available, but having a clue about human nature, it seems perfectly logical that man always noticed the difference in others.
And yet, Waller goes on to call someone an Anglo, a Coloured Anglo, a Black person. What is that but race?
Please Waller, ‘splain yourself. An inquiring mind wants to know!!
And afore y’all go accusing me of picking nits, I most humbly accept I am most certainly doing just that. BUT, tis still a fair inquiry, yes?
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Ha-Ha-Ha! How can ‘Race’ not be real? Well, let’s try a thought experiment that might help you over your conceptual difficulty, because yes, it IS a fair inquiry: Let’s just substitute the word ‘Race’ with the word, “God” to gain a little insight–
“How can [god] not be real? Differing [ideas about god as the preoccupation] of man has existed for almost so long as man has. I have no resource available, but having a clue about human nature, it seems perfectly logical that man always noticed the difference in [others’ conceptions of a supreme being].
And yet, Waller goes on to call someone an [episcopalian], a [catholic], Coloured [catholic], a Black [muslim] person. What is that but [god]? Please Waller, ‘splain yourself. An inquiring mind wants to know!!”
Ok, Lucy, I thin’ you see what I was tryin’ to say now, yes? Ayyyy, Dios Mio. Even though there ees no such thin’ as race [god], many pipples still call themselves theees thins that no exist outside of the social constructions of pipples’ cultures, so you can use thees thins as REFERENCE, but not as TRUTH. Unnerstan?
I bet you do.
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Of course race exists— in both a scientific sense AND a social sense. Are you trying to say race is a social construct in the same sense a differen’t cast of a person in India is a social construct? Even IF we used race just to help us sort out people with distringuishing features & heritage— how does that change anything anyway? People from African heritage have certain genetic similarities— as do Asians or Whites— from both an observational stand point as well as a scientific one.
Scientific? Africans have higher testosterone than whites, and whites have more than Asians. Africans have more fast twitch muscle fiber. Africans are susceptible to a host of illnesses like sickle cell anemia, and differen’t races have differen’t susceptibilities to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. African heritage peeps mature sexually at an earlier age and develop motor skills quicker than whites & asians. There are differen’t brain sizes between races— Blacks also have lower avg IQ than whites, and whites to Asians, Blacks are mroe aggressive in nature. Most importantly— they have certain genetic differences that a scientist can use to pin point the race of someone with a simple DNA sample. So— who are you to say race is a construct? Is binomial nomenclature just a construct? Is the difference between a Lab and a Dobermin a human construct? To some degree I’m sure— dogs can breed together so they are the same species, but that doesn’t mean we can’t sub divide them by further characteristics that they have?
Of course beyond that, there are clear differences that we as humans can observe that makes categorizing someone as easy as a glance and a thought. Features like eye color, hair color, skin color, hair style, even certain smells and behavioral patterns. Blacks can easilly tell if someone is caucasian, and we can all easily tell if someone has Asian genetics by thier common features. What exactly gives you the idea that race is as ambiguous as religion? That’s ridiculous and scientifically inaccurate.
We cannot tell someones religion through science or observation. What is your evidence that there are no races? It supports your agenda, and that’s the only evidence you need to make stupid claims.
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Do you believe that the African Rhino and the Asian Rhino, having evolved in radically differen’t areas of the world, should not be subdivided since they are both Rhinos? they can both breed together— but what of thier clear differences that we can measure scientifically and observe? Are you a believer that we should stop dividing life at the species level, whether it is a dog, cat, species of fish? If you believe that animals can be sub divided within species, why do you think differently of humans who all evolved in different areas of the earth?
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
A back and forth requires both parties to actual respond. Herneith did not even respond so how in the world does that constitute a back and forth? SMH
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Also Jimmy I believe this will help in your knowledge of said race. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_classification)
And no the idea of race today was not always in play.
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@James Milber
I would say what you said falls into the stupid claims category as well. Many of what you placed as “blacks have more of” have such a small sample size that only a complete moron would bring it out to begin with.
“Blacks can easilly tell if someone is caucasian”—I hope you realize that Caucasian does not necessarily refer to a white person if it refers to a white person at all?
Differences are obvious, but where do you toss in Arabs or Hispanics or other groups that are so ambiguous to race? Do you just say “well you look close enough to be xyz”?
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@James Milber
This is so stunningly foolish a response on your part that it hurts my head to even try to figure out PRECISELY WHICH logical fallacy it is. So I won’t. I’ll just dismiss your comment with two points to remember:
ONE: You cannot think straight if you have no sense of nuance. “Race” is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT, not an anthropological nor a physiological taxonomic descriptor meant simply to subdivide a specie, as you imply here; it is in fact, historically intended to do just the OPPOSITE of legitimate sub division into BREEDS if you will: it has been used to create a false impression of separate SPECIATION, and on top of that to declare a HIERARCHY of supposedly differing species, marking ‘lower’ species as deserving to be exploited or murdered. Maybe you hadn’t heard? This leery concept of ‘race’ has been jaw-jawed by less than thoughtful advocates as if the human race is not one single specie. As this blog has sadly demonstrated for all to see, both Anglo racial essentialists AND Afro racial essentialists commit this fallacy, whatever the official fallacy is. You, as I, and anyone outside of a rubber room knows that the Rhino is one specie. So is the human being. ‘Race’ is PHYSIOGNOMIC, and NOT a specification of PHYSIOLOGICAL difference–it is superficial, literally facial (physiognomy), in other words, resting on such foolish pseudo science as phrenology. It is not that people around the world do NOT have differing shapes of heads, noses, and lips; the problem is that heads, noses, and lips are not a legitimate taxonomy for the awarding of intimations of human superiority either cultural OR intellectual. I like to think that my being dark skinned, big headed, big nosed, and thick lipped as I am, and yet also an Ivy League graduate and university professor skilled in languages and literatures as well as science and technology, is an example of the pitfalls of ascribing to phrenological assumptions. It would HAVE to be a superficial cult of belief, since there ARE NO SPECIATION DIFFERENCES between Europeans and Africans. Repeat that six times to help yourself hear it loud and clear, or just go read Jay Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man”, okay?
TWO: You need to study the intersection of science and sociology and clear the language clutter in your head in order to see the distinctions that must be made between the two so that you can stop awkwardly cascading between DESCRIPTION and a supposition of species TAXONOMY. One is a social activity and the other is a necessary classifying of legitimate anthropological as well as zoological differences: Jacob Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man” (or even better, Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Mismeasure of Man”) can help you to pick apart nuance in the historical and social contexts of scientific development.
There is no discussion to be had here, only a wish you and others have that there be some sort of catering to what I have to conclude is your attempt at being rhetorical. We don’t use the word ‘race’ to distinguish any real, speciation differences between Rhino. We use that word sociologically, to pronounce false speciation differences between the skin colors of humans. This is, and has always been a lie, and your rhetorical pretense at supplying a false analogy (hey! That’s the fallacy you’re trying to sneak past us, isn’t it? Gotcha!) is either dishonest on your part as a racist ploy, or you simply don’t know enough science to adequately talk about phyla (a ‘phylum’ is a taxonomic ranking below’ kingdom’ and above ‘class’, designating various taxonomies of specialization, adaptation, morphology, and function. a SPECIE is the absolute rock bottom of the biological classification system of life on Earth. All classes, families, genuses, kingdoms, species, are merely subdivisions of a domain. You can and must therefore, account for differing physiognomic differences between members of a specie (such as the rhino) without necessarily creating new species to account for them.
Even worse for you and your argument, the biological classification system CAN have more than one SPECIE within a GENUS, in the animal or plant world. But if you go do some research you’ll find this interesting fact, overlooked by slave owners: humans (Homo sapiens sapiens–Homo Erectus) are the only extant members of the hominid phylum; Unlike rodents, bees, and some plants, Humans (modern humans) are not sub divided into alternate species. You can go study a cladogram (the family tree of a biological group) to see an example of how to think more clearly about biological taxonomies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade#mediaviewer/File:Clade-grade_II.svg
I have long felt and I am teaching it more and more aggressively to more and more resistant college students who wish to cling to superstition and medievalism and bear those ills they have than fly to a future world of science and rationalism they know not of and I keep saying it, and I will say it again, that William the Conqueror, a self-professed Anglo male and commentator here on this site is my brother. He is not only my brother because we are of the same heart and mind and soul, but because we are of the exact same genetic origins in Africa, as all humans are (See the Leakey family), and we are of a single, indivisible specie–the human race.
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What am I missing? Maybe I’m somehow misreading the thread, but it looks to me like Rayfield is responding to posts by Herneith that she is not making. I don’t understand.
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@ King
I think you are right! Looking back at the posts now I see it was mostly just a couple of posts by sharinalr not Heneith I was trying to respond to. I lost track of the names.
My age is catching up with me, my apologies to Herneith.
But no apology to the last person I was responding to, James Milber–I intensely disagree with his statement about rhinos and Africans.
I think you are showing me a sign, King, that I need to take a break from the internet–it offers the illusion that we are all speaking to each other, but we are not actually; we are actually alienated from one another by miles or even by countries, tossing words into cyberspace, making YouTube videos, scanning our faces with webcams, with each pseudonym catching the words and images out of thin air tossed up from other pseudonyms, and often some pseudonyms quoting other pseudonyms and, as James Dean says in “Rebel Without a Cause”, “You say one thing, he says another, and everybody changes back again!”
I’m taking a break and reading some of the Russian linguist, Voloshinov…
See you all on the dark side of the moon….
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I began reading the link you supplied and began noticing an extremely similar usage of verbiage applied here by Waller.
Knowing Wikipedia is available to all for their input, and thus though I refer to it a lot, I also know it can be biased towards the politically correct because I sought to change some words in an entry a few years ago and later saw it had been changed back. Be that as it be that, it just be’s.
So, I shall go back to the link and read more, but believing I am reading the writings of Waller, which can also be read here in greater depth.
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This whole speech sounds retarded. As i am a Black american and have had ancestors who have been enslaved. These point that have been mention as a “defense” are still valid points and shouldn’t be dismissed. If we are just going to dismiss their points why shouldn’t they dismiss ours? We need to grow and be better than what we currently are which is a group/race that has made a really bad name for ourselves even after we have been freed. Black people used to walk tall and have pride. now we just have wanna be murders/gangster and ENSLAVE the youth of today with such non-sense. 90% of gangs are Black Americans in the U.S. the first real gang was Black Americans. Black Americans need to have pride and keep it pushing and striving. not bad mouthing any valid argument that comes across.
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“I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves.
I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.”
– Ralph Ellison –
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@Kopper Kenny
Whether you are black, white, or Asian it does not require an announcement to make a point unless you are not such that you claim to be.
“If we are just going to dismiss their points why shouldn’t they dismiss ours?”—-The points are not being dismissed, but they are fallacies and it is commonly used to basically do just that. Dismiss the points of black people. Which is basically the point of the post. We know it happened, but it does not change the part of whites (who by all means changed the meaning of slavery in the Atlantic slave trade). This does not place Africans off the hook.
“We need to grow and be better than what we currently are which is a group/race that has made a really bad name for ourselves even after we have been freed.”—This really requires you have an extended history lesson. Once blacks were free many did grow extensively. They did not make this imaginary bad name for themselves unless the bad name you are referring to is wanting equal rights. A lot went on inbetween the time they were freed until the time when black crime was a real issue.
“Black people used to walk tall and have pride.”—Many still do.
“now we just have wanna be murders/gangster and ENSLAVE the youth of today with such non-sense.”—I believe you are referring to the poverty class. You know the ones you think live in ghettos. The ones that don’t even make up half of the black population but always reflect the black population.
“90% of gangs are Black Americans in the U.S. the first real gang was Black Americans.”—-I would asks were you got those stats and that information, but I am taking a chance you will even return. Black gangs commit 48% of crime and up to 90% depending on area, but that does not mean 90% of gangs are black Americans. Also here is a nice history on gangs and origins and blacks were not the first real gangs. http://gangresearch.net/Archives/UIC/Courses/history/beforethrash.html
“not bad mouthing any valid argument that comes across.”—Bad mouthing and disputing a supposed valid point are two different things. Most of the so called “valid” points have nothing supporting and are often met with supported material to the contrary. Which is to be expected with a valid point is nothing more than an opinion.
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@Herneith
Very nice quote.
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@ Rayfield
Ohhh, OK. For a minute there I thought I was crazy! I kept reading over the thread and I was thinking, “Am I skipping a few posts or something?” Thanks for explaining.
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@Rayfield
Despite all of your pseudointellectual fluffery, you fail to address any of the real objective arguments I made toward race. Instead, you just denounce my claims & attack my intellect, call my arguments stupid, etc— without truly rebutting ANYTHING.
Race is just a way to classify differen’t people by their ancestral migrations and subsequent evolutionary traits. Are you a proponent of Darwins Evolution of man? Are you arguing that despite humans living in radically differen’t environments for 50-100,000 years, the only adaptive traits they evolved to have ends at skin color & hair type?
What reason do you have to believe that— other than it fitting your agenda? Why does believing in racial classifications bring out so much disgust in you?
What do you say of the science that backs my claims? Of the measurable differences from one race to the next, in various attributes? The science behind race is HARDLY equivalent to phrenology in anyway. If it was, forensic scientists would not be able to pin-point the race of fossils to over 90% certainty.
Race is something not only measurable scientifically— Blacks/Asians/Whites have differen’t bone structures— for instance— Whites have thinner cranial bones than that of the Black, is prognathous; i.e.with Blacks, the lower face projects forward, The skin of the Negro is thicker and possibly superior to the White’s in the way it impedes the penetration of germs and in its protection from the ultraviolet rays of the sun. The dark color of the Negro is due to melanin pigment which is spread through every layer of the skin and is found even in the muscles and brain. A dentist can tell a Negro’s tooth from a white man’s at a glance. Negroes have arms which are longer, relative to body height, than those of Whites. This feature, together with their much thicker cranial bones, gives Black athletes an advantage over Whites in boxing. The skeletal and muscular peculiarities of Negroes’ lower limbs have given them considerable success as sprinters, but have left them relative undistinguished as distance runners. Negro skin has a thick superficial horny layer which resists scratching and impedes the penetration of germs.
So— with so many pronounced and measurable differences between races, why are you so against classifying people by their ancestral migration patters & subequent evolutionary traits? What inner fear does this stir up in you, that causes you to disregard such a reasonable classification of the human species, just as we classify all other animals species beyond their species level (IE the African vs Asian rhino—- two animals that can breed together, yet evolved to have different features based on their geography) based on science AND observation? Is this because you fear racial categorization studies make some negative assertions about Blacks that you choose to deny? Do you have evidence to refute any of what I said above?
Racial differences are not just obvious to any open minded human— they are based on science. I believe your only basis to deny these claims, rests in your fear that it will somehow explain the advanced societies of Asia & Europe in terms other than “supremacy” & “oppression’.
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@James Milber
One of the studies you are referring too was conducted by Andre Bejan. His measurements was on west African runners vs European ones.
In fact you need to site your source as you have a bit of a plagiarism problem in your recent post.
“A dentist can tell a Negro’s tooth from a white man’s at a glance..”—Only a sample of what I found from another here.(http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2010/07/13/race-doesnt-exist-except-when-it-does/).
As to this study, it shows a geographical difference. A west African runner is likely a faster runner than an Black American too, so what would be the excuse for that?
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I believe you should be thanking…..The Origin of Races, Professor Carleton Coon, President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and the premier geneticist of the world.
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@Sharinalr — I didn’t intend on passing off that scientific information as my own scholarly work— it is from other sources. As I am not writing a formal essay, I don’t see the need to cite everything I write in a scholarly fashion, but can provide sources upon request:
On the differences between African & European tooth structure:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19061802
http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/racial_variation_in_some_parts_of_the_skull_involved_in_chewing/
That West African runners out perform Black Americans in running strengthens my argument greatly, and does not hurt it at all—- Blacks in America have 20-50% white European DNA.
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@ sharinalr
Darwins work preceded Carleton Coon. Although Coon is an advocate for most of what I said, given the response I received it was most clear Mr Waller does not agree with his work.
I mentioned Darwin, because his theories are more commonly accepted and if Walker believes in natural selection and human evolution, that is the preface for which Coon’s work on the evolution of races is based. My point being— if you believe in evolution, why do you believe the evolution of races to be such an outlandish belief?
instead, it is more sensical to ask if Walker believes in the science Coon’s work is derived from, rather than whether he believes in Coon’s work in paricular (which is appears he does not)
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@James Milber
I am sure you are highly aware that if you are indeed copying a persons words verbatim then it requires a source and acknowledgement. That is with or without a formal essay. Also that is just part of the comment policy.
Your first link is dealing with teeth which has little to do with what you were talking about in the above. To address it fairly being more likely to not have something only notes in a certain group of people. It is not saying that there is such a large difference that a doctor can strip skin and know if the person is black or white. If I missed something please do elaborate.
Your second link it basically a white supremacy type site. If we are going to use that type of science to prove a point then by all means I should present one. If you have a site that is truly scientific I would appreciate it, but sites that say things like “Attractive whites should have chin length greater than the average for non-white”…yikes.
“That West African runners out perform Black Americans in running strengthens my argument greatly, and does not hurt it at all—- Blacks in America have 20-50% white European DNA”—-Actually it does not strengthen your argument. 1. Where are you getting the 20% to 50% from and 2. You do realize that West Africans carry European DNA as well?
Also you will need to show some correlation that having that European DNA is some how affecting their ability to run as fast as West Africans.
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@sharinalr
How about instead of denying anything you see, you show me some anthropological evidence that counters any of my claims?? Where is your evidenec?
The supposed racial supremacy site cites “1. Bastir M, Rosas A, Kuroe K: Petrosal orientation and mandibular evidence for an integrated petroso-developmental unit. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 2004, 123:340-350.” for the chart they used describing different dental patters…. Here, you can read the DIRECT SOURCE HERE — http://www.academia.edu/1966489/Petrosal_orientation_and_mandibular_ramus_breadth_Evidence_for_an_integrated_petroso_mandibular_developmental_unit
What I cited mostly clearly demonstrated what I said—- that a dentist can tell the differences between the mouth of an African vs European. What is the criteria necessary to prove that claim? That there are clear differences— and that is what I showed you, now with two sources…
Please know that all of you are denialism in the face of VAST scientific evidence to the contrary of your claims. None of the claims you give are backed by any published journals. If you wish to debate me further, please doback up your skepticism with some science, as I have just done.
I have taken a very rational stance— I am going with what science tells us, and see no reason to change my views because they counter your egalitarian, politically correct, social marxist agenda. I am not even sure why you think the existence of racial differences hurts your cause, anyhow.
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James, do you know the difference between correlation and cause? And saying that, (in some cases) you can tell the difference between the teeth of an African and a European does not quantify race. We have been over this so many times on this site that it’s hard to even repeat.
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@James Milber
I have yet to deny, but you know as well as I do that most of your work is from some white supremacy sites.
Secondly it should be clear what I am calling bull on versus what you are putting focus on. I could careless about the teeth as that basically was something you copied from another and I just pointed out to let you know it was plagiarized. The sources on teeth you presented so far are only talking about missing teeth in 12 and 18 year olds. Missing teeth is not something that will tell a person if an individual is black or white. Sorry but it just won’t. Also the cranium size is not something I denied or even brought up so you wasted a source and paragraph on that.
What I am calling bull on is as follows:
“That West African runners out perform Black Americans in running strengthens my argument greatly, and does not hurt it at all—- Blacks in America have 20-50% white European DNA”—False. The average black american has about 13% European DNA. Some sources go so far as to say 21.5%, but not more. Also Africans carry an amount of European DNA as well so it fails to explain the nonsense of why West Africans are faster than Black Americans.
“African heritage peeps mature sexually at an earlier age and develop motor skills quicker than whites & asians.”—Still waiting on this.
“Blacks are mroe aggressive in nature”—Still waiting.
“Please know that all of you are denialism in the face of VAST scientific evidence to the contrary of your claims.”—Only thing I denied was the ability of your white supremacy sites to be unbiased. 3 sources that lead back to the same scientist is not Vast scientific evidence. Plus I never made any claims to begin with for anyone to debunk. You made all the claims.
You are free to view the science as you please, but so far you have used to the science to come to your own conclusions and not much else.
“I am not even sure why you think the existence of racial differences hurts your cause, anyhow.”—I am not sure how you got that out of anything I said. Especially considering I have been ambiguous to what I believe.
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@King
So true. I was actually trying to find the posts where this was discussed at length, but I am at a lost.
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@Sharinalr What’s the point of continuing an argument with someone that is so intellectually dishonest? I just showed you TWO pubished journals, and you discredited it as white supremacy. Do you nkow the definition of white supremacy? Let me recap it for you: The belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society. — WHAT on earth does that have to do with what I have shown you? Does any site that cites & discusses clear racial differences a whtie supremacist site to you? That is a cowardly way to discredit things you do not like to hear. I am not so sure that discussing trivial traits like skull shape, bone density, and dental patterns has any hidden agenda to dominate Blacks through white superiority…This is especially considering all of these cites regard Asians to be of a higher intelligence than whites, which evidences their objectivity.
1.) If you read the studies, you’d see missing teeth was a side effect of structural differences. This is just one of the many studies I could cite. If you want to refute me, show ME a study with YOUR evidence. So many people feel so passionate about this topic, I am sure plenty of studies have been done.
http://goo.gl/QUro2H
“The racial differences are more marked in the
permanent dentition then the deciduous dentition.
The most striking feature in the Mongoloid
dentition is found on the lingual surface of
the incisors. There is the accentuation of the
lateral or marginal ridges which are fused with
a raised cingulum and creates a deep lingual
fossa. The ridge fades towards the incisal edge
and this gives the tooth a ‘shovel’ or ‘scoop’
shape (Figs.l&2). This condition is found in
approximately 90% of Mongoloids inclusive of
Eskimos and American Indians6”
How many do you need to see before you accept that you were wrong, and move on?
2.) Sexual Maturity – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12415029
“Non-Hispanic black girls had an earlier sexual development for pubic hair and breast development either by median age at entry for a stage or for the mean age for a stage than Mexican American or non-Hispanic white girls”
3.) Black Runners— Looking around, I see the average figure to be 16-18%, not 12%.
http://blackdemographics.com/geography/african-american-dna/
http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/dna-usa-2/
That is a significant amount of DNA— I don’t why you would say otherwise. Regardless, who ever said that ONLY DNA is responsible for traits? Environment obviously has an importnat factor as well. I fail to see how Black runners in Africa being faster udnermines my claim at all— it only strengthens it. Even if there was NO dna difference, it wouldn’t change contradict my claim as I never denied environment as a contributor.
4.) Black Aggression – Although I could easily point you to reasons for this (one being crime statistics across the GLOBE– not just USA), trying to prove this to you would be a futile can of worms. The numerous scientists who report this from their studies have their careers ruined and are accused of “scientfic racism”, IE James Watson, or the monoamine oxidase A, or MAOA gene that Blacks have in higher proportions to other races. Common sense from human experience would have most people agree with me on this matter— 50% of the murders in the US are from 12% of our population, and similar statistics are found across the globe.
I don’t expect you to provide me any science—- you did make claims. You claimed that I was false. The studies I found took seconds with a google search. If you want to research the subject further, I encourage you as you will find exactly what I am reciting to you. If you wish to just deny everything you don’t like, continue to do so, but if you cannot muster up a single study to evidence your opinions I’ll consider this case CLOSED.
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JAY MIL here– forced to argue from a different account. hhahahhaha— my comments are being moderated now. I guess when mr professor can’t rebut what someone has to say, he SILENCES them. So much for discourse and diversity of opinions. Cultural marxism at it’s finest.
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My comments end up in moderation all the time. Sometimes for hours. Stop jumping to conclusions.
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@Jay Mil
I highly suggest you read the comment policy before comments in moderation become the least of your worry.
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To all the “race realist” pseudo-scientist,
here is what I think about your “race” being scientific:
twin sisters Lucy and Maria:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2974869/The-twins-tell-apart-Striking-sisters-couldn-t-different-quirk-mixed-raced-parentage.html
This is the reason why “Ethnicity” became more important to the tribes of Europe, Asian, and everywhere else
because even the uneducated cave dwellers of Europe realized that 2 black or brown haired parents could produce a red-haired child.
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and these 2 biracial fraternal twins represent the main reason why the white American racist “eugenic” pseudo-scientists created the one drop rule:
because phenotype can sometimes be un-reliable, as many so-called white people learned, when they had a dark-skinned “throwback” child in the family.
That’s what happened to Sandra Laing
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@Linda
How does your link prove anything? It proves nothing. They are not identical twins— they are twins. Genes are expressed in differen’t ways. The vast majority of children to black & white parents have a mullato appearance, or a Black appearance. White genes are predominately recessive, and Black traits are more likely to be expressed. This is common sense, and unanimous truth. What exactly are you trying to say?
I really don’t even understand how someone could possibly deny something as obvious as race. It’s just a classification to describe people that have certain ancestra & evolutionary history, and have developed certain distinct traits. Race classification exists, because Chinese & Japanese people– as well as Native Americans, have more more similarities & a similar evolutionary history vs say whites and blacks. I can’t really understand what all the fuss is about.
Why is acknowledging race even considered racist whatsoever? If you are not asserting that one race is superior to another, what is all of your qualms with admitting the existence of race? If whites share common ancestors & evolved in similar ways, as did Blacks, as did Asians— what is the harm of a simple word used to classify them? I really would like to know why it bothers you.
How can you say Asians don’t have a variety of exclusive traits when it is so evident by observation alone, let alone overwhelming science? What exactly is your assertion— that every human group is identical, except for their appearance?
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@Jay Mil
Actually it proves a great deal. For starters your supposed science and logic states you should be able to tell a black person from a white person from an Asian person based solely on skull measurements and other features. That falls apart when faced with Biracial and other Mixed groups of people. For example Mexicans. They have a district set of features as well and can not be categorized based on your white, black, or Asian chart Yet they are not a race category. Your race idea is further shot to sh*t by the black and white twins born to black parents. I will elaborate when I have more time but you get the point. Even in Linda’s Sandra Lang link you fall short because both her parents were white. She was not mixed.
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@sharinalr For thousands of years, races lived apart and developed their differences from evolving apart under different environmental conditions. Now since we live in a global society, races mix…. and their traits mix.. this is 100% natural and normal and disproves nothing. Mixed races show mixed traits– that one child appeared ginger and highly caucasian was so odd, it made the news. I don’t see how race mixing and mixing of racial traits has any ammo whatsoever against ancestral racial traits that existed for 50,000-100,000 years.
Mexicans are a mix of Native Americans (Asian) and Spaniards (Caucasian), as well as Black (Negroid).. They do NOT have distinct features— some are very light skinned and appear liek Spaniards, others with more native features— and some a mix of the two. Mexico is a unique place, in that it is the result of massive racial mixing. The distinct features you point too are several hundred years old.
You truly believe two white parents birthing a black child is a common phenomenon? It is the result of African heritage in BOTH parents, coming together in the perfect storm of events that is highly unlikely. “Most white Afrikaners are only about 89% white by blood.”. I have 1% African blood—-in America, it is virtually unheard of for this to happen. How often do two white parents have a black child, are you mad? IT is virtually unheard of— that is why it made the news. How does that prove anything? The examples I gave are a drop in the hat compared to the many other differences documented. Whites and Blacks have over 15% DNA differences— that is huge in the DNA realm
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@Jay Mil
Race as you are claiming it was not how it was in the past. Race was more a cultural thing and many cultures interacted with each other and lived with each other. Of course people migrated to different areas and lived in different conditions. Race mixing by your regard is not a new phenomenon. This is something that has been going on for thousands of years as well. So it really puts your point on a flat.
“I don’t see how race mixing and mixing of racial traits has any ammo whatsoever against ancestral racial traits that existed for 50,000-100,000 years.”—But we are not talking about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. This is just something you like to jump back to in light of your recent ill-informed opinion.
” They do NOT have distinct features— .”—That is incorrect. Mexicans do have distinct features that allows me to be able to determine them versus say a Puerto Rican. Native Americans on the other hand do not look very much like the Asians you claim to categorize them as which falls short on your features theory once again. I know you get the gist of this, but I also know that this is the part where you become willfully obtuse.
“The distinct features you point too are several hundred years old.”—I thought you said there were no distinct features?
“You truly believe two white parents birthing a black child is a common phenomenon?”—-I did not say I did, but I did say…and I quote ” you fall short because both her parents were white. She was not mixed.” This does not hold to your theory of certain features allows you to pinpoint a persons race other than skin color. When faced with these type people (meaning mixed and others) you can’t tell. Trying to pull up ideas and thoughts from several hundred years ago won’t help much either as “race” mixing was going on then.
“I can’t really understand what all the fuss is about.”—You tell me because you are the one writing several paragraphs disputing anyone that questions your logic. So why does it bother you to be told that your theory fails to prove distinctive race versus obvious differences?
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@sharinalr
I have become tired of correcting your every word… I have realized you know absolutely nothing about anthropology, or racial science. You are a denialist, and there is nothing I can show you that would change your mind. There ARE things you could show me that could change MY mind— science & evidence, something you have provided ZERO of. Your points are both nonsensical & illogical.
Please provide some evidence— nothing you say has any basis, only opinion. Much of what you say is completely false as well. Racial mixing was much more rare until recently— Puerto Ricans looking differen’t than Mexicans is only due to the Native tribes who evolved differently in each region just as Koreans & Japanese look differen’t but part of the same race (or in Puerto Rican / Mexico terms, mix of races). Your whole point on pointing out mixed races as evidence that races don’t exist, because they share traits of both races (USUALLY— except in the very rare chance all of one parents traits are recessed) evidences nothing…. everything you say is explained within the realm of science I propose. None of it counters the science of race.
If you have some science that disproves race, I am eager to see it.
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Jay, you misunderstand the main point. We are NOT saying that race does not exist AT ALL. Obviously, it exists on some level or we could not distinguish between the “races” we know today. What we are saying is that “race” is based on minor phenotypical genetic expressions of genes that, in most cases, we all share. It’s not a difference of species or even subspecies. That’s all.
So arguing that people have minor differences, based on their proximate geography doesn’t make any sense. We already know that.
Secondly, the “races” as you know them today are not the result of a long history of isolation, rather they are the result of a long history of migration and intermixing of different people groups as they coalesced or distributed in and out of various regions. Add to that, weather and climate itself has changed in many regions from what it was in prehistoric times. There are many places that are cold or arid today that have fossils of lush tropical vegetation in their ancient sediments. This idea that today’s “races” are the result of purity and exposure to a certain given climate are simply incorrect.
Add to that the reality that when you are talking about ANY continent, you are talking about MANY different climates within the continent. There is no such thing as “African weather” or “European landscape.” Certainly there are features that can only be found in one place or the other, but it is not uniform and therefore could not produce the uniform racial categories which you espouse.
This is what the climate of Africa looks like today.
But even this map does not include that many micro-climates caused by orographic effect, prevailing wind patterns, elevation, There is no uniform climate, to produce a uniform race. It simply never happened in the way that you suppose that it did.
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@ Jay Mil
“I have become tired of correcting your every word… I have realized you know absolutely nothing about anthropology, or racial science.”—If by correcting my every word you mean your occasional avoidance, mind reading, and false implications then sure you “corrected my every word”. I never claimed to. In fact most of my posts were questioning your failed logic. A logic you still have not been able to fully address.
“There ARE things you could show me that could change MY mind— science & evidence, something you have provided ZERO of. Your points are both nonsensical & illogical.”—It’s not my job to change your mind. As I stated above, you are making the claim and it falls on you to thus forth prove said claim. I am basically saying you have not and my reasons stand as I stated above. Most of what I said is basic common sense. You have no leg to stand on in your argument and you keep trying to pull up things from the past to prove a point which later turns out to contradict your other points. If that is not illogical and nonsensical I don’t know what is.
“Please provide some evidence— nothing you say has any basis, only opinion”—It is not a matter of opinion that African Americans carry 13% of European DNA which is contrary to your false claim above. It is not a matter of opinion that ancient civilization mixed contrary to your false claim that they did not. It not a matter of opinion that race carried a different meaning in the past than it did today. It is also not a matter of opinion that mixed people can and do have ambiguous feature that does not easily allow one to pinpoint “race”. These are all matters of fact and the evidence requires nothing more than a 2 minute google search.
“Your whole point on pointing out mixed races as evidence that races don’t exist, because they share traits of both races.”—WRONG. I clearly stated why I pointed it out. How you came to that conclusion is beyond me, but let me reiterate it again…..Due to the mixing you can not claim that the supposed features you listed above will tell you their race. Your speech on teeth etc. ring a bell.
“If you have some science that disproves race, I am eager to see it.”—Just as I have been eager to see your science that proves race versus distinctive features. Putting the label of race on it is just labeling it as you see fit, but not evidence to support your stance. We can easily replace race with another name and argue that as well, but it all comes back to the fact that the features you mentioned above does not tell you a persons race definitely.
In short your science proves nothing, but what you want it to in accordance to your own ideas. 🙂
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@King
Very well said.
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@King — Climate today is not the climate/conditions that formed race originally, although you can see the clear difference between North Sfricans & Sub-Saharans by means of their respective climates & attributes.
White people developed lighter skin, for instance, because living further from the equator they traded melanin– protection against the sun— for skin that more readily absorbs Vitamin D.
It is common knowledge that people adapt to their surroundings— race is a combination of that, as well as shared ancestors that were responsible for migrations in one direction or the next. The point is— most Europeans all share a common ancestor that Blacks or Asians don’t have. Even when I did my Nat Geo genetic analysis— it pinpoints a particular person that most Europeans are descendants of, who formed my Haplogroup.
They say there is aproximately 15% difference in DNA between a white & black person. By “sub-species”, all that is meant by that is a further classification beyond species…. in the same way ethncity is, or a breed of dog.
There are so many visual differences that make spotting race fairly easy, until you bring multiracial areas like Latin America. Inuit Eskimos, for instance, are clearly Asian.
Just as ethnicites have their distinct differences (Irish have a considerably lower IQ than Germans, for instance, and it is reflected in the advancement of their culture, and the tendency for Irish to pursue manual labor while Germans have far more scientists & engineers).
All I am saying is if you take species– you can divide it by race, then ethno- groups like anglos / slavs / etc, and further divide by ethnicity. From an observational standpoint, it makes perfect sense. Just as the fox & wolf are different, they share a common ancestor & this have many similarities being part of the same family. Ethnicities in the same race share a common ancestor/ancestors responsible for the unique traits they all share.
Bone structures of differen’t races & densities
https://depts.washington.edu/bonebio/bonAbout/race.html
Above I showed differen’t sexual maturity ages, dental patterns. It is well known Blacks have increased fast-twitch muscle fibers that help with short-term sprinting, but is a hinderance to distance running. Skull shape is well documented—- we have differen’t average heights, hormone levels, even genital sizes.
One could argue it’s not that big of a deal— we are all human? That is true. We are more similar than we are differen’t, but why reject the beautiful differences and nuances between us? I think so long as race is not used as a justification to assert superiority, acknowledging it’s existence is logical and harmless, and backed by endless science. Even between ethnicities of the same race, we can find stunning differences—- but they always will have more in common with each other than with soeone of a differen’t race. It is very complex— it is not black and white, as so much has gone into our evolution & development as a people… I believe we should always seek the truth, rather than believe lies because political correctness dictates the truth is dangerous. To reference Plato’s allegory of the cave— once you see the light, there is no going back. Until others see the light, you can never change their beliefs until they themself are brought to the light to see for themselves too.
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@ James
Correct, but it also seems that in the past, climate was much more universally moderate, and less varied. For example, we know that at one point, much of the earth was warm enough for large, cold-blooded reptiles to thrive in.
Correct. We call this “phenotype.”
I would be careful in talking about genetics in terms of percentage of genetic differences. Consider what you are saying when compared to what this article from Scientific American is saying.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tiny-genetic-differences-between-humans-and-other-primates-pervade-the-genome/
Are you saying that the genetic difference between “Blacks” and “Whites” is greater than the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees? Because that would be an extraordinary statement, I’m sure you would agree.
Again, remember that we all agree that race exists phenotypically. We all get that there are small differences based on people groups. But these differences are based on comparisons of statistical averages, not on absolute taxonomy. What we are saying is that, on average this race group shows more of this particular human tendency. But the tendency will be present (to some degree) in all populations only not at uniform levels. Sometimes, its heredity, sometimes its environment, sometimes its based on habits and customs. For example, dietary habits greatly effect bone density.
Bear in mind also that each family could be seen as a little “race.” If you look at the children of two parents, they will tend to share features of their parents. Often, you can tell just by looking which children belong to which parents. This is because there is a strong, recent, genetic link between parents and offspring. In fact, the genetic link is much stronger than the distant genetic links that establish “race.” Yet, most “Race Realists” do not regard family with the same genetic determinism as they do race. If we stated that White kids who’s parents are blue collar workers are genetically predisposed to also be blue collar workers, most would strongly disagree. In fact, they tend to believe that White kids, no matter who their parents are, can grow up to be anything that they choose, so long as they study hard and have access to the proper training and resources. Thus they set aside the strongest and most direct genetic links of family and concentrate instead on the far more distant and fuzzy implications of their genetic phenotype as determinative of their abilities. This, of course, only demonstrates the confused illogic and blatant hypocrisy of their position.
Nobody is rejecting are phenotypical differences. We can all see differences in skin tone, eye shape, hair texture, etc. We just do not attempt to enshrine these differences as absolute, or as evolutionary end points. Our current “races” are the result, both of the mixing and isolation of populations. The future of the human makeup will be dependent on how the world is shaped by technology. Clearly, the world is becoming smaller, both through means of transportation, and though means of virtual communication. Races WILL become more mixed, that is inevitable, and it is the way it has always been when cultures have collided. It is not something to be feared, opined, or resisted. It is simply the path of human development, EMBRACE IT.
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I should probably add as a footnote that I was not arguing above that humans were contemporary with the Jurrasic period. I was only arguing that climatic conditions were much more uniform then, and that they certainly might have been in some more recent epochs as well. In any case, climate is not a constant variable.
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@King
http://www.nchpeg.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=142&Itemid=64
In regards to race, “Using this definition, individuals from different populations have roughly 10 percent to 15 percent more sequence differences than do individuals from the same population (this estimate is approximately the same for both SNPs – see below – and CNVs).”
At first I was confused by the same question you posed— how could humans & the house fly share 90% of our DNA, or what not? and between races, 15%? This is because these figures represent two entirely differen’t measures. They are saying that 10% of the house fly DNA could NEVER be found in a human, and is uniquely FLY DNA. The 15% variance between race can be described, I believe, as there being 15% of our 100% human DNA, referring to traits that are specific to other races. I am not 100% sure, but it is clear when comparing other animal DNA to human— they use a differen’t measure than when comparing differences within human populations. There is a 5% difference between males and females, and look at the drastic differences we have there? There is obviously something more to this than you or I understand. It’s h ard to say if even the 5% between sexes and 15% between races can be comparable on the same scale, as humans & chimpanzees are.
I don’t agree that white kids can be anything that they choose to be. If you look at a bell curve, intelligence between one race to the next will have different averages, but there are still some on the lower and higher part of that bell curve. I believe most attribute genetics to at least 60% of intelligence, with 40% being attributed to environment, so whether the children of blue collar workers has the potential to be a nuclear physicist all depends on what they inherit, how environment plays a role, and whether the parents took blue collar jobs despite being intelligent. It’s also possible that intelligence in past family members skipped the parents, but reached the children… we can’t locate the genes for intelligence as it is a complicated mix of genes, but some children can be more intelligent than their parents— inherently. There are always going to be overlap— An ashkenazi jew, said to have the highest IQ in the world, may be less intelligent than an average white person.
As for families being “mini-races”—- I believe the point of race is that most within that bloodline share common features, but the gene variation doesn’t end there. Ethnicity & specific family trait variances still exist. Race is just a classification of people with common ancestors that share common traits.
The conclusion of the research regarding bone density doesn’t point to it being an environmental factor.
Thank you for particiapting in this discussion. At times, there is so much involved in genetics, and so much overlap, it’s easy to forget what exactly anyone here (including myself) is really trying to say here. I am not really how people’s positions here really differ from mine— are you trying to assert that Koreans, Japanese, and Native Americans should not be categorized by their common similarities anymore than a Nigerian & British man should? That there is no more variance between an Aborignee and a German than an Italian and a Frenchman? Are you trying to say that Asians are not shorter than Blacks, on average??? Both being racial classifications? What is your position exactly?
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INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN JAY GOULD
edited transcript
Stephen Jay Gould was one of the foremost natural historians of our time and has written many books, including The Mismeasure of Man.
What was wrong with Samuel Morton’s skull measurements?
Samuel Morton had amassed the best and most extensive skull collection of different types of people that had ever been gathered together, and he tried to measure the volume of a skull. And when he got his hundred skulls of American Indians and compared them with his forty or fifty skulls of African peoples and his many Caucasian people, he ended up where he expected right in the beginning: with white folks having several more cubic centimeters than Indians, and Indians having several more cubic centimeters on average than blacks.
Now, since so many studies since then have found little to no difference among human groups – not that it would matter if there were substantial differences – you wonder how he got those results. Supposedly he’s making an objective measurement.
Then you realize it’s not that easy to measure the volume of a skull. What do you do? You pour in something, like mustard seed, as Morton started to use, or lead shot, as he used later, and you pour it out again into a graduated cylinder and you measure the volume.
It’s not that easy, and there are lots of room for unconscious error. You see, I think his errors were unconscious, because he published all his results. If he was trying to be fraudulent, you don’t publish your results, you cover up your tracks. He published all his raw material so it was available for me and others to analyze to show that the results he claimed weren’t even inherent in his own data.
His unconscious biases weren’t behind everything. There was also the distribution of body sizes in his sample. One of the reasons his Indian measures were so low is that he had his sample very strongly biased by a group of skulls which he called Inca-Peruvian – I’m not sure they’re actually Inca people, but they were very short-statured people. And there is a correlation between skull and body size. That’s why the brains of women turn out to be smaller in gross weight than the brains of men. It’s just a body-size correction. And he wasn’t making proper corrections for stature.
In fact, some people have calculated – there’s some disagreement; nobody cares anymore because it doesn’t matter – but if you make the proper corrections for body size, women actually have, on average, larger brains than men. It doesn’t matter anyway. But yes, that’s another source of his skewed results.
So, skull size doesn’t correlate with intelligence?
There are so many historically conditioned biases in Western culture. A lot of it is the simple vulgarity of “more is better” that we apply to automobiles and penises and all sorts of things that don’t really match it. A lot of it comes out of concepts of progress that arise powerfully in the 18th century. A lot of it comes from an unfortunate human inclination to rank people in hierarchies so that they can put their own group on top, I suppose.
But all of that feeds into what is really a pretty vulgar and simplistic notion that if you’re going to study any entity, he who has more of it is better. Now, the deeper fallacy is why should we even think that something as complex as what we call intelligence is any single entity at all, before you even get to the error that you might measure that single thing by a simple quantity of cerebral tissue?
So, there’s so many errors piled together into Morton’s experiments. But for me, at least, in terms of measuring brain sizes, the most important error is the primary fallacy of categorization. To think that intelligence, which is a word we use to encompass all these hundreds of different cognitive skills – to even think that it’s a thing, that it’s an entity, that it’s one quantity which can be measured in terms of the cubic centimeters of some stuff you have in your head – it’s such a naïve notion. But there it was and it’s an error we still commit.
Are scientists today similarly biased?
The reason I remain so interested in the history of science is that it’s easier to flay open the biases of the past because we’ve overcome them. I think we’re largely unaware of how our own deep beliefs – which just seem either logical or necessary or proven to us – are as immersed in bias. I think it’s very hard for us to understand that.
Look, it’s only when I was a graduate student that continental drift and plate tectonics, which seems so obvious in retrospect, was accepted as a major revolution in the earth sciences. Now, my older colleagues, who never accepted it to the day they died, they weren’t stupid or evil, but they were certainly wrong.
On the other hand, you know, we do get better. The genetics of racial variation as we understand it today do quite conclusively show, I think, how fatuous the notion of deep, significant, ineradicable, wide-ranging differences are. We’ve measured genetic variation. Morton obviously couldn’t do it. He didn’t know about genes to begin with. And it’s one of the great liberating advances in science.
Science can be liberating as well as restrictive. We have now understood genetic variation in human beings – I’m not saying our knowledge is fixed for all time; it never is — but I think we have seen just how shallow and superficial the average differences are among human races, even though in certain features, like skin color and hair form, the visual differences are fairly striking. They’re based on almost nothing in terms of overall genetic variation, and that’s because we now understand that human racial variation is much, much younger than we ever thought it was, that probably all non-African racial diversity is less than 100,000 years old.
That sounds like a lot of time, but to an evolutionary biologist that’s an eye blink; that’s not enough time to accumulate anything in the way of evolutionary difference. So science liberates as well as falls into the biases of its time.
Who was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach? And what does his classification scheme tell us?
Blumenbach’s story is really interesting. He published his main work in 1776, which is symbolic to Americans for other reasons. Here’s a man who, in the late 18th century, was a genuine egalitarian, as close as you can come at an age when almost everybody thought that there were inherent differences, with whites on top and Africans at the bottom. Here’s a man who amassed a library of writings by black scholars and poets. He was the most egalitarian minded of late 18th century scientists. And yet you can never escape your time.
When he makes his racial classification, oh yes, he doesn’t do it in terms of differential intelligence or moral worth or any of the conventional racists criteria. But he can’t totally escape his context. So he bases it on beauty.
I think it’s not widely understood why we have this odd term, Caucasian, as the sort of semi-official term for the white folks of Europe and the Near East. It’s Blumenbach’s name. He found the skulls of people who lived around the Caucasus Mountains to be the most beautiful of skulls. He says the Caucasian people are the most beautiful. How do we know that? Just look at the skull, it’s obvious, he says. So he names the race for what he took to be the highest manifestation thereof in terms of beauty. And he called it Caucasian and that name stuck.
And then he has two lines going away from it in two directions, one leading to African blacks and the other leading to Asian peoples. It’s really quite remarkable. He’s so insistent that this has no meaning in terms of innate worth or intelligence or moral rectitude, and yet he makes a classification based on his perception of beauty and thinks it’s objective. It’s remarkable.
How did Friedrich Tiedemann’s skull measurements dispute Morton’s?
Friedrich Tiedemann, I confess, has almost no biographic information. He’s a great scientist. His scientific work is well known. He worked mostly on physiology and anatomy. He’s a German anatomy professor, and yet he has this enormously strong feeling in terms of racial egalitarianism. And he believes it. I don’t know why. Thank goodness he does.
He wrote an article in 1836, which he published in English first, which is not his native language, in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which is the 19th century’s most forthright defense of a purely egalitarian view. In fact, he measured skulls also [like Morton]. And his argument is that there’s no difference. And actually, it’s funny, if you calculate his data, it’s not clear that he didn’t have unconscious biases in the other direction, but that’s his claim, and it’s an important paper.
And I always wondered, why did he write it in English, and the answer is he wanted to praise Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. He said so explicitly – I hadn’t realized that until I studied the paper. He says, “I’m writing this in English because I want to praise Wilberforce’s efforts and the efforts of the British Parliament to outlaw the slave trade.” And then he published a longer version in German the next year.
I confess, it’s the only thing he wrote on human racial variation. I don’t know where it comes in his autobiography. I confess I don’t understand where this wonderful and great and admirable piece of work came from.
What was the influence of the debates between 19th century ‘race’ scientists?
The sad and tragic truth from our current perspective is that the debate was not between egalitarians and racists; there were very few egalitarians in our sense. Tiedemann is as close as you come. Even Blumenbach, as I said, though he’s egalitarian philosophically, is still making classifications by beauty. Even Alfred Russell Wallace, the most egalitarian of English scientists – Darwin was not – is still saying that European culture is superior, even though all people have the same kinds of brains.
The debate is really between those who think that whites are superior but don’t think that ought to be used as an excuse for enslaving blacks or in any way deterring intellectual blacks, because they think although the black mean is lower that individual blacks can do anything if they’re unusually talented. That’s Lincoln’s position. I mean, most of the abolitionists didn’t think blacks were equal in an intellectual sense. They thought they were equal in a moral sense.
So the debate is really among people, all of whom agree, that whites are superior. And so therefore it’s not gong to be answered simply by utterly debunking the claim that whites have larger brains. It’s certainly going to be ameliorated by that. And that’s why I’ve never quite fully understood the extent to which the scientific debate factored in, although I think it did factor in an important sense – that is, the more liberally minded folks tended to make arguments that yes, the average black is inferior, but that’s not inherent, innate, and unchangeable; that’s the result of culture. It’s improvable, it’s changeable.
Is it correct to say, ‘We’re all Africans?’
The human species started in Africa. In that sense, yes, we’re all Africans. But it’s important to keep in mind that current African peoples are as descended from that original entity as people of European extraction are. We’re all equally African is the only way to think of it, because that’s where the species started.
And that’s pretty clear. I don’t think there’s much debate about that.
The big debate has been when do the non-African people get out of Africa. And that’s been complicated because clearly, close relatives of modern humans were in Europe, where they eventually evolved to the Neanderthal people, and were in Eastern Asia – Java Man, Peking Man, and the old types of Homo Erectus, probably a million and a half to two million years ago. So there were folks moving out of Africa a long time ago, and it was widely thought until recently that it was that first migration that gave rise to human racial variation. In which case human races would be fairly old, even in evolutionary terms.
It turns out that’s not true. I think there’s almost genetic proof now – I wouldn’t say the issue is totally resolved – that those lineages just died out, that Neanderthals in Europe died, that Homo Erectus in Asia died, that there was a second migration of our modern species, Homo sapiens, which emerged from an Erectus stock, but an Erectus stock in Africa, and that all modern humans are the products of this second migration, which is probably less than a hundred thousand years old by the best current evidence.
It looks as though all non-African diversity is a product of the second migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa – a migration so recent that there just hasn’t been time for the development of much genetic variation except that which regulates some very superficial features like skin color and hair form. For once the old cliché is true: under the skin, we really are effectively the same. And we get fooled because some of the visual differences are quite noticeable.
What caused different skin colors to evolve?
We don’t really know what causes different skin colors, and I don’t think anyone should claim we do. There are competing ideas.
The strict Darwinian selectionist theory would claim that different colors are advantageous in different environments. The old argument – and it’s not a stupid one, it may be right – is that having fair skin in a tropical climate doesn’t do you a whole lot of good with respect to Vitamin D deficiencies and that darker skin color is an adaptive advantage there. And that white skin is advantageous in high latitudes where there isn’t intense sun and you need to get vitamin D with the help of sunlight. That may be so.
Interestingly, that wasn’t Darwin’s own suspicion. Darwin’s own suspicion was that most of the visual ‘racial’ differences are due to what he called sexual selection and have no adaptive significance in terms of physiology or anatomical adaptation. He said, Look, humans are just enormously various in their preferences. For capricious reasons different standards of beauty arise among different groups of isolated people, and then in the process of mate selection certain cultures favored one skin color, one body form, and others favored others. And so those differences arise for a reason. But the reason is the capricious aesthetic preferences of different groups throughout the world.
And another possibility, of course, is that some of these founding populations were very small and so you can get just random differences arising from them.
We don’t really know what causes differences in skin colors is the honest answer. And they’re not, in an evolutionists’ sense, at all significant. Obviously it’s been significant historically and culturally. But I think an evolutionary biologist tends not to be enormously troubled about it because skin color differences are so minor with respect to the immensity of evolutionary change.
How odd is our system of racial classification?
My favorite trivia question in baseball is, “Which Italian American player for the Brooklyn Dodgers once hit 40 home runs in a season?” Nobody every gets it right, because the answer is Roy Campanella, who was as Italian as he was black. He had an Italian father and a black mother, but he’s always classified as black. You see, American racial classification is totally cultural, and it’s based on the unfortunate and sad legacy of racial distinction based on this ridiculous metaphor, the purity of blood.
You’re identifiable as having black ancestry because we can see it. I mean, who’s Tiger Wood, who’s Colin Powell? Colin Powell is as Irish as he is African, but we don’t classify him as that.
No, we have a really screwed up classification. To think it’s biological is just plain wrong. It’s based, flat-out, on the legacy of racism and the metaphor of the purity of the blood. It’s a very troubling issue.
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@everyone from my vacation cottage on the dark side of the moon:
Question to Dr. S. Jay Gould:
How odd is our system of racial classification?
Answer from Dr. S. Jay Gould:
My favorite trivia question in baseball is, “Which Italian American player for the Brooklyn Dodgers once hit 40 home runs in a season?” Nobody every gets it right, because the answer is Roy Campanella, who was as Italian as he was black. He had an Italian father and a black mother, but he’s always classified as black. You see, American racial classification is totally cultural, and it’s based on the unfortunate and sad legacy of racial distinction based on this ridiculous metaphor, the purity of blood.
You’re identifiable as having black ancestry because we can see it. I mean, who’s Tiger Wood, who’s Colin Powell? Colin Powell is as Irish as he is African, but we don’t classify him as that.
No, we have a really screwed up classification. To think it’s biological is just plain wrong. It’s based, flat-out, on the legacy of racism and the metaphor of the purity of the blood. It’s a very troubling issue.
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Yes, I was aware… In fact, I believe that humans have around 80% DNA correlation with a head of cauliflower. Thus the use of DNA percentages to make points is often misleading. (which was my point) Most people hear that Humans and chimpanzees have a 98% to 99% DNA correlation and think, WOW, we must be incredibly close to chimps! But nobody tell you that all living things are pretty close, as it turns out, and all mammals are that much closer. So naturally, primates are the closest to other primates. But that is not really shocking news that “confirms” anything in particular, that we didn’t already know.
In the same way, quoting genetic percentages of variance that try to eliminate the general differences that are found in all living things is imprecise and highly presumptive at best. You can make no valid points using these kind of guesses (and that is all that they are). I know that if you read some websites it makes it sound as if you can easily separate the “human” and “non-specifically human” DNA, but it is not so easily done – good for a hypothesis perhaps, but nowhere near fact.
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Yes, I was aware… In fact, I believe that humans have around 80% DNA correlation with a head of cauliflower. Thus the use of DNA percentages to make points is often misleading. (which was my point) Most people hear that Humans and chimpanzees have a 98% to 99% DNA correlation and think, WOW, we must be incredibly close to chimps! But nobody tell you that all living things are pretty close, as it turns out, and all mammals are that much closer. So naturally, primates are the closest to other primates. But that is not really shocking news that “confirms” anything in particular, that we didn’t already know.
In the same way, quoting genetic percentages of variance that try to eliminate the general differences that are found in all living things is imprecise and highly presumptive at best. You can make no valid points using these kind of guesses (and that is all that they are). I know that if you read some websites it makes it sound as if you can easily separate the “human” and “non-specifically human” DNA, but it is not so easily done – good for a hypothesis perhaps, but nowhere near fact.
You mean that you don’t agree that ALL White kids can be whatever they want, but you do assume that most can be. The principle I was outlining is that most “race realists” will not consider any genetics outside of race, even it is much more recent and direct than a racial connection.
Of course, I never understand what “race realists” are getting at. Lets say that a race of people WAS inferior… if you still believe that they are just as valuable (humanly speaking) then what is that difference? How would knowing or admitting that they are inferior help anything? It seems like a colossal waste of time
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Not for nothing, y’all,
But loads of Blacks, American Blacks, are very quick to assign race – Blackness – to any and everyone exhibiting the slightest amount of Blackness in them. Eldrick Woods is more than half of Oriental blood, but due to the 1/4 Black blood, y’all call him Black. Same thing with Ebama. Half White/half Black, y’all call him Black.
Y’all are just as guilty of paying this race game as is everyone else.
So whatcha got to say for yourselves?!
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@ Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
If race is only sociological, then so what?
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Orientals is harmless.
And actually, I would ask them where they hail from, then refer to them that way. Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Indian, Chinese, etc.
What?Y’all would lump them all into one category? Because you do know that the biggest chunk of Turkey is in Asia, dont you? So, you would call Turks, Asian? Lumping them with the Japanese? Same with the Middle East, on the Asian continent. You would call Arabs, Asians? Lumping them with Indians?
Sociological? THAT was my point! This whole stream of back-and-forth about race is illogical because of course it exists. And as I said, in so many words, so frigging what?
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Of course it is illogical—race is just a concept… But then again, it’s also quite logical because people believe in that concept. In the absence of absolutes, perception is reality.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Actually I would call said person by their name. Unless of course their name was Asian.
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Unless you people here have officially been designated as the word police, by the Orientals themselves, you have zero idea what is and is not offensive to them.
As I said, would you lump the people of Turkey with the people of Japan in calling them Asians?
Would you lump the people of the Middle East with the Indians in calling them Asians?
I should hope not.
So as I first said, I would call them by the nation of their origin! Orientals are different from those in Western Asia.
Get used to it and get over it.
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Wow. Orientals? What the ever living fcuk?
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Because of your blind belief that all commenters are Black you would not know that an Asian commenter is telling you that it is offensive.
The funny part about all this is watching you as a white man try to tell him what is not. So you deemed yourself the right to not only dictate how offensive the word is to him, but then turn around and try to say “you have zero idea what is and is not offensive to them.” You are dismissing him on the spot with your forever nonsense.
“So as I first said, I would call them by the nation of their origin! Orientals are different from those in Western Asia. Get used to it and get over it.”—You have issues. No one is saying you can’t call them as you choose, but none is saying you don’t look a bit foolish and dated in doing it either. *shrugs*
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What do you mean, you people??!!!
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There are well over 1,000,000,000 Orientals living in Asia. If you people can show me a poll where 51% or more of them find the word offensive and I MIGHTEN think about not using the word.
But one (1) out of all those numbers is not the designated spokesman.
You are just one with a chip on their shoulder, just like those are who find the phrase “you people” odd and offensive.
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It’s kind of like you’re in a meeting and you call the only woman in the meeting a “Broad.” She says to you, “Please don’t call me that I find it offensive.” So you reply, “Whoopdie do! Who made you the representative of all Broads!?” Where’s your poll?
If the one woman present finds it offensive, then you don’t use it. Why would you go on calling her a “Broad” and insist that from your male point of view it isn’t offensive at all?
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“I MIGHTEN think about not using the word.”—Oh No! We just can’t have you not being a prick. Heaven forbid that. So I gather you should continue.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley…Gee golly wilickers Jimmy, how dare Black people assign race when conservative whites are so quick to discriminate against anyone with the slightest bit of Black in them…So if conservative whites are going to DISCLAIM every person who is darker than an albino then why shouldn’t Black people welcome them with open arms….conservative whites are so quick to discard people and people of color are quick to protect their own…Sounds pretty noble to me but what would someone like you know about being Noble…
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Calling someone “Oriental” (or their cultures, languages, etc.) to their face nowadays is egregiously mean and nasty. Just as “colored” harks back to the days of Jim Crow Segregation, “Oriental” harks back to the pre-70s “perpetual alien” and “yellow peril” era, when persons of Asian descent were denied immigration or citizenship, or dehumanized so that they could be rounded up in concentration camps or killed easily as enemy alien non-humans.
Well, we still have Yellow Peril and Perpetual Foreigner stereotypes today, but no need to rub it in with the term “Oriental”.
However, I think it is worse than “colored”, occupying a niche somewhere between “colored” and the n-word in its level of disrespect. By contrast, “colored” just seems old-fashioned. “Oriental” is worse than that.
The only time where it might be able to be used without appearing mean and nasty is when one is talking about the treatment of persons of Asian descent in the USA in the pre-70s era. For example, we can discuss the opening of the Oriental School in San Francisco in the 1880s, as we can discuss the colored schools during Jim Crow.
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Because of the outburst of dissenting opinions, I went and looked up Oriental. According to every online dictionary, the word is only sometymes offensive, NOT universally. Not at all in some parts of the world.
So apparently, people have to be taught to be offended. Just like people have to be taught to love/hate, you have to be taught to be offended.
How stupid is that?
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Regarding the words “Coloured” and “Negro”.
I still maintain that until the naacp and the United Negro College Fund rename themselves, those two words remain on the table, free to use.
Fair enough?
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Yes, that’s because it’s not offensive when describing a rug or a piece of art. .
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“Sometimes offensive” is already enough reason to try to avoid using a word unless you are sure in which context, or to which people it is considered offensive and when it is not.
For people who do not know when it is appropriate to use a word that is “sometimes offensive”, it is better to avoid using it altogether.
Even the n-word is not considered to be offensive 100% of the time by 100% of the people in 100% of all contexts. But it doesn’t matter. If you are not 100% certain when it might not be offensive, then it is better to not to use it at all.
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@sharinalr
So, if their name was “Asian”, you would not call them by their name? What would you call them by?
@King
My uncle used to work as the manager for the equal opportunity office of a US Federal government agency. He told me that white managers would get severely disciplined for using the phrase “You People” to black employees or any employee not classified as white. If it was not corrected, they would be removed from their positions.
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@Jefe
If Asian is their name then I would call them that, but I would not run around saying “hey Asian” to every person of Asian descent I see.
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OK, OK. 😛
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@Jimmy….”According to every online dictionary, the word is only sometymes offensive, NOT universally.”
Yes, just like sometimes whites are racist but not universally…You are completely correct. We know by your nature to defend racist and racist ideas that you are the racist of the two…Correct?
Will you be seeking a spot at the S-A-E fraternity? A place where hundreds of young Republicans will go on to run their daddy’s business’s and discriminate against Blacks, Asians and anyone that doesn’t have an uptight stick in their white a#$….thus continuing the HUGE disparity in employment and furthering inequality and oppression of Blacks.
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@Jefe….” “Sometimes offensive” is already enough reason to try to avoid using a word unless you are sure in which context, or to which people it is considered offensive and when it is not.
For people who do not know when it is appropriate to use a word that is “sometimes offensive”, it is better to avoid using it altogether.
Even the n-word is not considered to be offensive 100% of the time by 100% of the people in 100% of all contexts. But it doesn’t matter. If you are not 100% certain when it might not be offensive, then it is better to not to use it at all.”
I was thinking the exact same thing Jefe except mine came out much more angry and much less brilliant and wise….which I think Jimmy wants, I think you really piss him off when you continue to prove to be the better man, the wiser man, the man with Grace and Tolerance….quite amazing how graceful people on this site are when faced with the rantings of bigots…
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And just because you people here say a word is offensive means not that it is. Same principle applies to me, in that, just because i point out that a word is not offensive means not that some person will make the decision to be offended.
If anyone cares to check, look at these online dictionaries and read through some of the comments as well.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oriental
This one I found no commentary.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=oriental
However, the bigger point is still that, no one is born knowing how to be offended by certain words, they have to be taught this. So one can grow up never being offended by certain words, then move somewhere, where his same people ARE offended, then he has to be taught something he never knew was a bad thing IS a bad thing where he now lives.
To me, that is messed up. Not a whole lot different than teaching someone to hate. .
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The Oxford dictionary says that “Oriental” is “offensive” when applied to people:
noun
offensive
A person of Asian, especially East Asian, descent.
Usage
The term oriental has an out-of-date feel as a term denoting people from Asia; it tends to be associated with a rather offensive stereotype of the people and their customs as inscrutable and exotic. In US English Asian is the standard accepted term in modern use; in British English, where Asian tends to denote people from the Indian subcontinent, specific terms such as Chinese or Japanese are more likely to be used.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/oriental?q=Oriental
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Yes the Urban Dictionary, likely wrote by someone of color or by a collaboration of people gets it right….
Oriental = Politically incorrect term used in place of “Asian.” Correct usage should be an adjective for things like inanimate objects, not humans.
And the dictionary written by whites, Miriam Webster, gets it wrong….
Oriental = of, relating to, or from Asia and especially eastern Asia
Yes number 3 one the Webster list says, “sometimes offensive” but isn’t that just like a white man to make light of a racist or offensive word or of an entire group of people…
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I have an idea Jimmy, why don’t you be a Man and accept that sometimes words are offensive to some people and if someone says to you that any of these words are offensive, do the right thing, like Spike Lee says and don’t use it around that person or just omit it as a describing word in regards to people altogether. Wouldn’t that be the most Noble thing to do? Wouldn’t that be the courageous thing to do? Why would you attempt to tell someone else what is offensive to them and what is not? Are you the offensive police? Do you know how every single person on Earth should feel and not feel? How would you even begin to know how offended someone else is? Have you ever been called Oriental? Have you ever been from the Orient? Are your parents Asian? So just how in the world are you to convince us that you know when people are offended and when they shouldn’t be?
You see where I am going son…STFU!
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The Asian American Journalists Association says:
ORIENTAL:
Caution. Many Asian Americans liken “Oriental” to “Negro,” a term of condescension. A vestige of European imperialism, the term, at minimum, is vague. In art, it may include countries such as China and Japan, but exclude Turkey. In rugs, it may mean India and China and include Turkey. In food, it may mean China or Japan, but not India, Vietnam or the Philippines. See also ASIAN; ASIATIC; CHARLIE CHAN; CHINA DOLL; COLONIALISM; DRAGON LADY; EXOTIC; FU MANCHU; IMPERIALISM; INSCRUTABLE; YELLOW PERIL; YELLOW SKIN.
http://www.aaja.org/aajahandbook/
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I have an idea Jimmy, why don’t you be a Man and accept that sometimes words are offensive to some people and if someone says to you that any of these words are offensive, do the right thing, like Spike Lee says and don’t use it around that person or just omit it as a describing word in regards to people altogether. Wouldn’t that be the most Noble thing to do? Wouldn’t that be the courageous thing to do? Why would you attempt to tell someone else what is offensive to them and what is not? Are you the offensive police? Do you know how every single person on Earth should feel and not feel? How would you even begin to know how offended someone else is? Have you ever been called Oriental? Have you ever been from the Orient? Are your parents Asian? So just how in the world are you to convince us that you know when people are offended and when they shouldn’t be?
You see where I am going with this…
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
I read the comment section and the majority of Asians said it was offensive. Only one Filipino guy stated it was not. Those that rationalized it was a majority white people who have no idea what it is like to even be Asian.
Even of the whites that did correct them, they gave details as to why it is derogatory.
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I have an idea: don’t feed the troll.
This is what I’ve been talking about; teaching White folks like James here how to be benelovent and repentant for their racism is not the task at hand. We don’t need their respect, their kindness, their acceptance, or their love. All we need to do is end Western (White) Civilization’s near monopoly on media, resources, industry, and violence.
Let Tim Wise worry about redeeming White people.
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@ taleoflions:
From my position (on vacation) this thing you say about ‘white folks’ seems dangerous if not totally crazy, because you like so many others are essentializing race. ‘Whiteness’ is a CULTURE not an essence. MANY so-called Blacks (some of them in my own family) are quite ‘White’ or more to my liking is your mention of something more real: Western culture–they are thoroughly westernized in terms of capitalism, materialism, exploitation of the Earth’s resources, and domination of the planet.
I am not certain I trust that giving over power to ME will mean I will do something qualitatively different with it. In fact, I suspect I would simply, consistent with all of human history so far, imitate all the same horrors that have preceded me and that had oppressed me. Leon Trotsky’s recognition of this truth in the aftermath of the Russian revolution led to his rebellion against his fellow bolshevists, his expulsion from the Party, his exile, and his being assassinated by his former buds sending an agent to bury an alpine axe in his skull in Mexico. Like Trotsky, though, I believe in permanent revolution–don’t just seize power, GET RID OF IT. Abolish race, class, and gender, abolish armies, nuclear weapons and fossil fuel. Abolish the insane human delusion that we need to own things. Most of all abolish masculinity as a culture. Race has become such an obsession of those who lie that it is real, that they can no longer see past the insanity of their own lie.
“The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.”
― George Bernard Shaw
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@ R. A. Waller
That’s like saying there’s no such thing as French people, only French culture. It’s asinine sophistry: you cannot separate a culture from the people who practice and are defined by said culture.
What you and many others call “Whiteness” is actually American Culture, which is a subset of Western Culture. I would simply speak of “Americans”, but (too) many Black people think they’re American too. I don’t want to confuse people, but let’s not get it twisted; “Western” and “American” have racial connotations and always have. The “Nation” and the “Civilization” are just as fictional as Race: the result of education, socialization, and propaganda.
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@ R. A. Waller
There’s nothing to stop you from living off the grid in a quasi-anarchy settlement nestled in the mountains. Many so called “tribals” still do:
(http://youtu.be/wyzi9GNZFMU)
But here’s the thing: as culturally and anatomically modern H. sapiens sapiens, we are drawn to create and take part in stratified civilizations. So long as that is the case, war, oppression, and inequality will be a major element in the Human Condition. I believe there are ways to organize civilization in ways that greatly alleviate Human suffering, but I don’t think we could abolish such things altogether without effectively going extinct.
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@ R. A. Waller
I do hate to triple post here, but there are 7 billion+ people on Earth now. The planet could not support that many people without infrastructure, the very infrastructure that relies upon resource control and extraction to support. Abolishing that power would condemn hundreds of millions of people to death by starvation, disease, and desperate violence. Then there’s the power vacuum. . . .
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“You see where I am going son…STFU!”
You arent my Daddy and I aint your son, so how about you STFU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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taleoflions……here are some people that would disagree with you….
http://listverse.com/2013/01/24/10-tribes-that-avoided-modern-civilization/
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@William
*sigh* I am well aware of the existence of such tribes. My point was that the Earth cannot support 7 Billion people living a pre-modern tribal lifestyle. There’s a d@mn good reason why the world population was practically flat for thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution: our methods of producing and distributing food were too inefficient to support population growth.
Without modern technology, the Earth’s effective Carrying Capacity would plummet to pre-industrial levels, resulting in a the greatest human disaster since the Toba Catastrophe.
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@William
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
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@taleoflions
Ha-Ha-Ha-Hahahahaha! Thanks, Taleo, you’ve expressed my point quite well! Now you’re getting it– there ARE no such things as “French” people, particularly given that that cultural description is only a couple hundred years old, maybe three. What were they BEFORE they were French? I happen to teach French history and am selling a novel set in 13th century (it was not ‘France’ yet, my good man), ALL cultures are merely ongoing social adaptations (never finished but always ongoing, as is the case inside your head RIGHT NOW even if you are suffering from the delusion that you are some ‘essence’ of identity that is fixed in time and space), Concomitant with these social adaptations are of course anthropological and evolutionary adaptations; linguistic and morphological adaptations, and the effects of ingression of populations (genetic matter coming in) as well as egression of population cohorts (genetic matter going out). You read what I posted by the scientist who spent a great deal of his career writing about this–Stephen Jay Gould. Didn’t you read that post closely enough? If you disagree, sorry to say this, but so far you offer nothing scientific (where are your sources and your counter arguments from morphology, endocrinology, anthropology and evolution to counter Gould??).
France was a collection of Celtic speaking peoples, prior to the Roman Empire’s distortion of their geographic and social lives. The Romans called them the Belgae, the Gauls, and the Gaeli (they called ALL barbarians ‘Gauls’ at some point or other, and even conditioned some Germanics to start calling themselves this!), but political, social, even regional shifts, changes, population irruptions and recessions across thousands of miles of geographic space over a thousand years have given us (temporarily) the modern-day NATION STATE of France. “France” is a shared mass notion conditioned by what the social historian Louis Althusser calls ‘ideology of state apparatuses” (Nation states have a political interest deploying ideologies such as ‘race’, national identity that will no longer evolve, and in FIXING the false boarders, ethnic distinctions, and evidence of territorial difference in order to wield and maintain power.
Your every post carries the heady odeur as the Franks would say, of the obsession Althusser exposes in his works of social history. Every nation state has what anthropologists and what we historians refer to as “internal histories”, that often are repressed or even erased by absolutists and essentialist who have political and as in your case, ideological agendas connected to settling peoples down, stopping miscegenation, essentializing identities (even within the frankly phenotype-shattering reality of a cosmopoly such as modern America!), shutting them up, conditioning them to see difference where there is only differing EXPERIENCE, brainwashing them into seeing these differences as ESSENCE, as INNATE, INBORN, and in the modern euphemism, GENETIC
Check out the groundbreaking book by Robert Jay Lifton, “Nazi Doctors” and his chilling article, “Medicalized Killing at Auschwitz” upon which he based his book. Lifton’s by now widely anthropologically accepted thesis is that racial essentialism of the most parochial sort in Nazi Germany, left over from the racialized pseudo-sciences of the slave trade and the plantation system, was so widely and mindlessly swallowed in Germany that even trained medical doctors gave their support to the superstition behind the purely political act of ‘othering’ European Jews with lies about their ‘inferior stock’, asserting that Jews could thus not possibly be Aryan (whatever a freaking’ Aryan really is, huh?)
By the way, I have an ex girlfriend who is African American who has relatives living in Hamilton, Canada, Ontario Province, just a couple hours drive from Detroit, where I live, who are bona fide German in descent. That makes my ex as much Aryan as African (although of course, it really means NOTHING to be ‘African’ because again, ‘Africa’ is a designation imposed on an entire continent by the Roman Empire (‘Africa’ is an absolute diversity of a thousand nations, states, countries, nation-states, kingdoms, villages, tribes, kinship groups, and nomadic filial phenotypes” according to Nobel Prize winning Nigerian author, Wole Soyinka, whom I happen to have been a student of in grad school at Cornell University). The long Westernized history of The Continent as many Africana Studies scholars call it, is essentially an ARTIFICIAL IMPOSITION of colonialists, racialists, and racists for the purpose of enacting an illusion of fixedness for their own agenda of dividing, naming, categorizing and controlling the human race. See “The Long Road: A History of the Colored Canadian in Windsor, Ontario – 1867 to 1967” by Charlotte Bronte Perry.
So you see, when I keep saying me and William The C are brothers, I literally mean it (I hope he doesn’t mind me yapping about that repeatedly!), He and I, being both Americans, have just as much in common as I ever could with a modern Ethiopian who happens to live on the same continent (some) of my ancestors were stolen from hundreds of years ago (though far East of where those ancestors were at the point they were stolen, but then, isn’t it probable that many of those stolen Northwest African kidnap victims were actually from completely other parts of the continent and just happened to be traveling in the Northwest at the point they were taken??
You might also check out the history of Italy–very illuminating. The CIA World Fact Book (a very important source that is used by most of the political scientists I know and share faculty lounges with) reads:
‘Italy became a nation-state belatedly – in 1861 when the city-states of the peninsula, along with Sardinia and Sicily, were united [beaten into submission] under King Victor EMMANUEL. An era of parliamentary government came to a close in the early 1920s when Benito MUSSOLINI established a Fascist dictatorship. His disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany led to Italy’s defeat in World War II. A democratic republic replaced the monarchy in 1946 and economic revival followed…….’
This often brutal and basically bourgeois imposition upon an absolute diversity of regional tribes, villages, and nation states of a single fixed national identity was first done in the form of colonialism by the French (irony! oooo!) and then by the Italian bourgeoisie in the name of ‘liberation. As the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, however:
“Although the Risorgimento has attained the status of a national myth, its essential meaning remains a controversial question. The classic interpretation (expressed in the writings of the philosopher Benedetto Croce) sees the Risorgimento as the triumph of liberalism, but more recent views criticize it as an aristocratic and bourgeois revolution that failed to include the masses.”
So yes, you got it right. There ain’t any stinking Frenchmen, per se. I wait here in my vacation villa near the Aristarchus Plateau to see what your own scientific sources are, and how you will rebut Lifton, Althusser, Gould, the history, and the social science. I suspect you’ll either resort to sheer repetition or (I hope not, because you’re not such a bad fellow, just weak in empirical support for your claims) ad hominem. But as far as your statement about the French goes you hit it right on the head. I believe there is hope for you yet.
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@all
A slight correction:
” I happen to teach French history and am selling a novel set in 13th century FRANKLANDS (it was not ‘France’ yet, my good man)”
Whew! I cannot stay away from you people even on vacation! I’m going out to collect some rocks.
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@R. A. Waller
Don’t patronize me. I got “it” years ago. I simply elect to use my knowledge of “it” in a manner you don’t approve of.
Once more, I know this. Do not presume that my mind is enraptured in this or that delusion of the world ending with me. That’s the stuff of strawmen.
I neither stated nor insinuated disagreement on this matter.
I really, really despise being told/taught things I already know. As for an “identity that will no longer evolve”, that would more aptly describe you, no? After all, a permanent revolution as you describe would usher forth the End of History; a world frozen in the revolutionary moment wherein stability, ordered society, and novel culture are destroyed the moment they take root. A world of bloody chaos; a Reign of Terror without end. That is the world you seek to create, or have you simply neglected to consider what permanent revolution entails?
It is awfully difficult to resist ad hominem when you make tongue in cheek swipes at my intelligence and gleefully dance upon my biggest pet peeve.
Let me begin my actual response with a quote:
-Thucydides, emphasis mine.
I have no intention to rebut the history and social science. Firstly because I agree. Secondly because I don’t have to. I am a Realist through and through; I deal with the world and the people/cultures therein as they are in this present moment, rather than how I believe they ought to be. I make sense of the world through the lens of Realpolitik and strategize according to whom I’m dealing with and how they perceive reality. You honestly (and foolishly) believe that good science would show racists the errors of their ways. You honestly believe that people want to see the world the way you do if only they knew more. You would force your reality upon others, and you do so with the charisma and humility of a smarmy grade-school know-it-all thereby destroying any possibility of accomplishing political work.
I’ve had enough experience debating people who had perceptions of reality irreconcilable with my own to accept that it’s a futile effort to attempt persuading them. That’s why I have no interest in insisting that Race is a fiction to people who feel otherwise. It would be far more productive to check/rival the power that racists wield, than to try to sway hearts and minds that are firmly entrenched. Ironically, this requires quasi-nationalist tactics on my part. Personally I’d prefer a more inclusive form of geopolitical organization than Nationalism, such as described by Andrea Smith:
Ultimately, however, it’s not up to me alone. If Nationalism is the moral cost and necessary evil of achieving liberation in a World brimming with powerful Nation-States, than so be it.
====
The Nation-State is the primary Geopolitical organization of the world at this present historical moment. Regardless of how fictive the foundations of the Nation-State are (and it seems to me that you accept only the material and genetic/taxonomic as authentic/real. That would make you the bio-essentialist, not I), their capacity to inflict grievous harm, to determine who shall live and who shall die is very real:
Click to access achille-mbembe-necropolitics.pdf
Power is real, so in my estimation that leaves us who are stateless and nigh powerless with three options: we become Sovereign and thereby wield death to protect our rights, personhood, and humanity; we continue to prostrate ourselves before the American Nation-State; or we engage in your mad enterprise of “Permanent Revolution” and plunge the globe into an everlasting Dark Age bereft of historical recollection, documentation, literacy, and the violent destruction of society so thorough there would be no evidence that the Modern World had ever existed (never-mind that Permanent Revolution is impossible).
Option two is surrender my body to a death deferred. Option three is a Worldwide Holocaust. I choose Sovereignty because it’s the least bloody and oppressive course of political action.
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Rayfield….You have no idea how good it makes me feel when you think of me as your Brother. It makes me feel better about the world and mankind, which I frequently have disdain for. It confirms to me that what I feel in my heart and what I dote on in my mind, is or can be, reality.
You see I get angry with some people here during our debates but in reality I truly want everyone to get along to some degree. I get angry because I don’t get it, why would someone deny basic facts or have a different opinion regarding the same event based on what color skin a person has, it is illogical but more importantly it is just SAD. Is it not our human nature to protect each other, is it not our nature to lend a hand to the underdog or the sick and hungry? What about the oppressed? How can a man or woman deny Black history in this country and it’s brutality. Here we have one person with Ebola die in this country and a large portion of the country freak out and want to ban all Africans from entering the country, when every year over 50,000 people die from the flu! We have police shooting over 1,000 unarmed men each year, 63% of them Black and those same people don’t bat an eye….the basic conclusion is that they don’t care because they are not Black, it doesn’t affect them. They are men, human beings, AMERICANS! Can’t you see that you have more in common with them than not? Why are there so many white people that don’t get it? Is it because they are the catalyst for such things? How can that be when I myself am white and I am not like them and neither are the millions of other Liberal whites out there. I guess it all comes down to life experiences like Rayfield so eloquently pointed out the very first time we spoke or wrote each other. Many very racist people have changed their colors, no pun intended, once they were introduced to the culture or people they had once hated. We really need to spend more time together, plain and simple…Of course there will always be exceptions to every rule but I truly believe that 50% of racist would change with only some experiences with new friends from other cultures and with different skin color…
I just feel good about a man seemingly worlds apart from me in regards to education, experience, skin color and culture who considers me his Brother, because I too consider Rayfield my Brother as well…
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@WoC
As I’ve alluded to in another thread: if close proximity between Blacks and Whites were the antidote of racism, one would expect the Antebellum South to be the most anti-racist time and place in American History.
Both yourself and Waller (and Antiracists at large) are incapable of accepting America for what she is and what she isn’t. Or if I must be so @nal-retentive, you’re incapable of accepting how White Supremacy and Antiblackness are profoundly integral constants in the formulation of the American Nation:
(http://youtu.be/wevifsvKUG0)
(http://youtu.be/Qd0ZzUFk1kw)
When the American Republic is no more; when the West is reduced to smoldering ruins and its people scattered to the winds; when the World as we know it comes to an end then perhaps we could be brothers. Until then, Race is a Social Reality that justifies the murder of 630 young Black men like myself every year whether we like it or not. Black culture and politics will (and must) continue to adapt to that reality.
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Taleoflions….
Tell me what part of the country do you live in?
The reason I ask is because i live in California and I was raised in a mixed family, had a Black step father and had several Black cousins, Aunties and uncles. We were one big family and race was almost never brought up and it was no different from my white side of the family in regards to structure. I will admit it was my white side that was the most prejudice, my step dad didn’t like or trust white guys but he was raised in Louisiana and Texas in the 50’s and 60’s so you can guess what he had to deal with.
You are wrong about relationships between people who have different skin colors. In California there are so many diverse cities and diverse families and diverse friendships. Rayfield and I are perfect example of how two people with the same beliefs and the same heart can be friends, brothers that transcend these biological meat suits. Rayfield is my brother and you may not like it but it is too late for that, him and I have reached a level of acceptance because of tolerance and respect and I may be a bit forward but I feel similarly towards Sharinar and Kiwi, jefe, Abagond, King and many others here that I share a common bond with….
I know I am very cynical towards white people but lets not forget that there are just as many good white people as there are bad white people. Not all whites believed in slavery and not all whites owned slaves. It is people like these that fought in the Civil War alongside the men they believed should be treated equal. While Blacks were being tortured in the south, whites in the North were marching with MLK to get the laws to change. These men and women risked a lot to speak out in a society dominated by rich white conservatives. The same is true this very moment. Have you seen the video at the Wisconsin state capital? Thousands of protesters of every color, every gender, every religion protesting another shooting of an unarmed black man…while the shooting was deplorable the unity is beautiful…
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“While Blacks were being tortured in the south, whites in the North were marching with MLK to get the laws to change.”
You honestly believe Whites in the South were one in the belief of racial superiority? You believe Whites in yankeeland as one believed the opposite?
You sir are sadly misrepresenting.
1917: Chester, Pennsylvania
1917: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1919: Washington, D.C.
1919: Chicago Race Riot of 1919
1935: Harlem Riot of 1935
1943: Detroit Race Riot
1943: Harlem Riot of 1943
1963: Cambridge riot of 1963 (Cambridge, Maryland)
1964: Harlem Riot of 1964 (Harlem neighborhood, Manhattan, New York City)
1964: Rochester riot (Rochester, New York)
1964: Philadelphia 1964 race riot (North Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
1965: Watts Riots (Watts neighborhood, Los Angeles, California)
1966: Division Street Riots (Humboldt Park neighborhood, Chicago, Illinois)
1966: Hough Riots (Hough community, Cleveland, Ohio)
1967: 1967 Detroit riot (Detroit, Michigan)
1967: Buffalo riot (Buffalo, New York)
1967: Milwaukee Riot (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
1967: Minneapolis North Side Riots (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
1967: 1967 Newark riots (Newark, New Jersey)
1967: Plainfield riots (Plainfield, New Jersey)
1967: Cincinnati riots over controversial arrests in Avondale.
You want more proof the yankee was NOT the friend of the Black race?
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Jimmy….
2015….SAE fraternity, Oklahoma University.
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@Jimmy
Southern States…..490,309 southern whites died trying to preserve the enslavement of Black human beings.
Northern States….596,670 northern whites gave their lives to abolish the enslavement of Black human beings.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which side was Courageous and which side was full of absent minded bigots with nothing more than white supremacy on their feeble minds….but like I said, “it doesn’t take a genius”.
Yankees will always be the victors, always be the most Noble, always be the most HUMAN…and the main reason for victory was the addition of Black troops and the collaboration of good men fighting tyranny and injustice together against an EVIL force…
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You honestly believe that is that day and tyme, all those yankee bigots who despised Blacks more so than Southern Whites did, gladly died horrible deaths so that these “creatures”, as many of them called the Black people, might could be made free?
How did that kool-aid taste? And which flavour did you drink?
Check this link out. Take your tyme as there is a whole lot there. http://slavenorth.com/
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“I think if our government would take more interest to how they used the Poor Soldiers and less these stinken old worn out Negroes for the Rebs to feed and take that which to give to the Negroes I think this war would a great deal quicker get settled. But they take better care of the Negroes then they do of a Poor white Soldier.”
“Most white Americans at this time thought of black adults as children, lacking in mental ability and discipline. Slavery had stripped black men of their manhood, so the thinking went, making them dependent and irresponsible. These stereotypes led most whites to assume that a black man could never be trained to fight like a white soldier.”
“(General) Sherman simply was indifferent to any moral dimension of the slavery issue in large part because he did not see Negroes as humans.”
In December, 1859, Sherman wrote, “I would not if I could abolish or modify slavery. . . . Negros (sic) in the great numbers that exist here must of necessity be slaves.” To his wife, he wrote, “Like Burton in ‘Toodles’ I say, ‘damn the niggers.’ . . .”
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I stand corrected Jimmy, you are right….The evil hand of the white man has no boundaries.
Not even Northern whites, who WON the Civil War to end the evil of human slavery, could keep Southern whites from infiltrating their borders…Conservative whites (scratches head), they get into the darnedest places…LOL.
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@ William the Conquerer
If you study the history of the Civil War, you will find that the slavery issue was not paramount in the mind of Lincoln and the North until well into the war. Lincoln himself wrote about to deporting the Blacks out of America. And the proof is in the pudding. Once the war was over, the northerners were just as vicious in imposing Jim Crow laws. Blacks were free… but free to be second-class citizens confined to the ‘bad side of town,’ kept from eating in the same restaurants, buying in the same shops, and worshipping in the same churches.
The myth that White Northerners “gave their lives to free the Black man” is a common misconception. White Northerners gave their lives to PRESERVE THE UNION and dealt a blow to the rebel states by emancipating their slaves. But this was not done, in many cases, out of a noble love for Black people.
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@WoC
You misunderstood me, “we” is a tricky and dangerous word. The fault is mine, I commented while “hot”. I became very irritated with Waller’s insinuating that his friendship with you– among other things– made him morally & intellectually superior to me, as if his patronizing and playing Lunar astronaut wasn’t insufferable enough. I took it out on you, and for that I apologize.
Of course there can and has been bonds of political concurrence, friendship, romance, and brotherly/sisterly love across the Colorline. Jaded though I am, I have no objections to such relationships, but — and this is what I was trying to get across — they do not negate the Colorline as a factor in determining the lived realities, experiences, and cultural identities of people in the United States. Nor does the Colorline negate the authenticity such relationships, I just want to make it perfectly clear: race is still a social reality, it hurts tremendously, and making overtures of friendship, diversity, and a shared humanity is not enough to alleviate that pain or end the murders. Indeed, California is rather notorious for its corrupt and racist police departments, so I’m rather peeved that diversity is still being held up as self-evident progress. It’s cosmopolitan states like California and New York that breeds more hardcore racists:
Until the Colorline is dissolved, people of differing skin colors cannot be a single, united People/Tribe/Nation/Ethnicity/etc. on this continent. I posit that only destroying America and everything she stands for at the very least could even have a shadow of a chance of producing a world without the Colorline, but I don’t have the stomach for the kind of blood price necessary for creating that world.
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King…actually I know this all too well, I am only humoring Jimmy because he got his feelings hurt when I didn’t include him in my comment about my friendships I feel I have gained since joining the site.
Jimmy took a simple sentence about people marching together and flipped it upside down like all good Trolls do. My sentence was a mere observation and notation to provide my friend Rayfiled with an endearing comment in response to one of his….but of course Misery loves company so jimmy had to cherry pick the one comment he could throw mud at, the comment in noway meant to be accurate historically in regards to which side was more racist but only an observation…all he did was confirm just how evil, how bitter and how rampant white hatred, evil and arrogance is entrenched in this country…
However, regardless of how many racist were in the North and why the war was mostly fought, it is clear that the southern states are much more intolerant than Northern states. It is just a fact. Southern states would still be discriminating if it weren’t for the Federal Government from stepping in. Southern states had almost all the hate crimes compared to the North in regards to Lynchings and Church fires, the KKK is a southern entity. The rebel flag, the SAE fraternity, Alabama, Mississippi, etc…I am the first person to agree that white people are racist everywhere, even here in California where us liberals bask in the sun, most of our conservative neighbors are quietly being racist.
Back to the civil war….I know there are many reasons why the war was fought and I am sure it wasn’t as Noble as white historians would have us believe…but whether you want to admit it or not, many good white men died on that battlefield and their deaths led to the end of slavery in this country. If you have read any of my comments you know there is no one harder on white men than me but damn it there are lots of good white men and women and there were many back then. If there weren’t things would have never changed or would be much worse.
Please don’t think that because I acknowledge the deaths of civil war soldiers that I believe that Black people are freed because of the white saviors of the north, I am only acknowledging their effort in conjunction with the fortitude of Black slaves, the underground railroad, Buffalo Soldiers, Black women and their work in hospitals on the battlefield, etc…It was a collaboration of men and women of many colors and it may not be as pretty as they want us to think it was, it was a glorious ending and at the same time a heartbreaking event for hundreds of thousands of families.
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Thank you taleoflions…..
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@WoC
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that this country should get no credit at all for finally ending slavery… only that the means and meaning of it’s ending has been intentionally shrouded in an exculpatory mythology.
It’s as if a neighbor of yours had taken a lion cub from Africa on safari and raised it in his back yard. But the bigger the lion grew, the more he felt the need to cow and subdue it. Eventually, he took to a regimen of having the lion bound between for sturdy posts while mercilessly whipping it bloody. You could hear the lion’s roars and groans as your neighbor shouted, “Down you brute… DOWN!”
Of course you objected to this but after all… to was HIS lion, so what could you do? But after a time you had a property dispute about the dividing line between your two plots of land. One thing led to another, and in the absence of a justice system, you got into a fight with the man and beat him after a long struggle. You were both hurt, but since you won the fight, you could dictate the terms. So you took your land AND just to spite him, you also took his lion away from him, as a penalty!
Now you wouldn’t have to deal with all that awful whipping. So you poured a concrete floor and built a 10 foot square iron cage and put the lion in it. You felt pretty good whenever you saw the lion pacing in his cage, and thought of your neighbor NOT having it. Then one day, you notice the lion miserably biting at the bars and pawing at the floor of it’s confining cage. With a start, you run over to the cage and bang loudly on the bars with a broom handle! “Down you brute… DOWN!” you say!
Some people just don’t appreciate a good man.
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@ King:
What a croc of shyte. The vast majority of those Bonded people were well treated, under the circumstances.
To be sure, there was probably less mistreatment of them than there are now of children. For proof, there are numerous letters, pamphlets written by them either in the years or in the years afterwards. Some detailing the cruelty visited on them, some expressing the kindness with which they were treated.
Now given by 1860 there were around four millions of bondsmen here, even IF there were 10% of cruelty cases, which is a small percentage, it would still be around 400,000 cases. A very large number to be sure, but a small percentage number still.
Look, mankind always has been and always will be cruel towards his own as well as others, as well as to animals. Neither you loonies on the left, nor the smarts on the right can change this. It is human nature. It is that some can control this within themselves better than others. And those who still in this day and age, continue to believe the lies the rabid, hateful abolitionists’ told and wrote about, I guess even were you people here to go back in tyme and witness the truth in what I say, and claim, you simply would not believe your own eyes, and would probably claim it was a stage play set up to fool you.
Ever heard of the yankee abolitionist Nehemiah Adams?
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Are you speaking of American slavery as “the circumstances?”
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@Jimmy
Now you are spouting shyte. You tried to argue this same lie above and was not able to present anything to support it. Accounts of a few people is not the vast majority. You can argue your hypothetical stats all you want, but it still does not support your vast majority claim. It is you, again, trying to rationalize your obvious bull. Based in full on your opinion.
“Some detailing the cruelty visited on them, some expressing the kindness with which they were treated.”—-Is it some or the vast majority. These terms don’t have the same meaning and are not up for interpretation like you love to falsely argue.
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@ sharinalr,
Can YOU provide anything to support your, and presuming you are speaking for most people here, position of disagreement? You people here are always saying I can not prove my claims. Well neither can you. What? Show one single photograph of one man’s back all whipped to shreds? And has anyone ever even proven this man was a slave? Has anyone ever even determined his identity? And you people here accuse ME of being unable to substantiate my claims? Like the potato calling the rice white, dontchathink?
I mentioned Nehemiah Adams. Did any of you people here even bother?
Moreover, there were indeed several slave States that had Constitutional protections for the bondsman. Didju even know that?
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King…I get it, I do…I see it among whites all the time, day in and day out, from my own family, the people I love unconditionally, lucky for them.
Again a lot of white behavior is a learned, white supremacy model that has influenced us, whether perpetrated or just a natural occurrence due to hatred and treatment over time. And then a lot of it is just ignorance and arrogance mixed in with a lot of hate and misplaced bitterness.
I get to see white people as close to their true self as they are going to be and sometimes I get to see their REAL feelings when they think all the whites in the room are going to agree with their rants.
Recently I had a slew of experiences 3 days in a row where white people, including my family, offended me deeply with their racist remarks and behavior. During one of my transactions at work some of the people selling the property were making racist jokes, making racist comments about their Asian neighbors and kept bringing up and showing each other racist post about the president. Granted these white contractors were not the brightest bulbs in the box and most racist aren’t but it is that racist lineage and behavior that I know all too well. I am mistakenly included all to often, I guess I do look like the typical skin head white racist. I had a black kid ask me once during a basketball game if I was a skinhead. I laughed and said, “no why?” It finally dawned on me why he asked me that, I had just recently started shaving my head due to balding. Thats when I thought to myself, that must be what it is like to be stereotyped, I was about 30 years old before I felt that feeling, unlike people of color who are inundated day in and day out by it.
But then again I meet white people online and sometimes in real life that are as angry and as compassionate as myself. Over the last few years talking online I have met thousands of wonderful white people who get it, they really do; men, women, gay people, straight people, elderly and young.
In real life it is hard to know which people are the good ones and which ones aren’t. Talking politics or race is strictly forbidden in the white community so you have to look for subtle behaviors or comments that tip you off. I find talking about race or racism is no different than talking about the weather, it doesn’t bother me one bit. The ones who do find race conversations uncomfortable are usually the ones who harbor hate and bitterness…
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King….(about Jimmy)
No one knows more about the treatment of Black slaves than a 21 century white racist cherry picking online letters for the EXCEPTIONS to the rule.
Jimmy…Yes and victims of the Holocaust loved their vacation at Auschwitz.
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The facts are, NO ONE knows except they themselves who lived it, and they arent here to tell their tale.
All we have are tales written down, recorded in the Slave Narratives, as well as other preserved writings.
Who knows for sure which was hyperbole and which was verisimilitude.
You can prove ‘tat’, I can prove ‘tit’. Somewhere closer to me than you is the truth.
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Jimmy…here are some “more modern day photos” of Blacks being treated fairly, as you say, which are directly related to the slave trade and the oppression and 400 year torture and brutality of the Black people of this country by low intelligent, inherently evil white people…
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129025516
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington
http://www.austincc.edu/caddis/civilrights
http://www.greatblacksinwax.org/Exhibits/lynching.htm
http://originalpeople.org/race-riot-1919-omaha-the-lynching-brown/
http://www.thecoli.com/threads/lynching-postcards-inherently-graphic-images-do-not-come-in-if-you-have-a-weak-stomach.209951/
Rest on this a bit Jimmy and NOW let us here you deny Black history and tout how “Honest” white history is. You are brainwashed by your own bias, of course your bias, your white, use your head, think logically for once in your locked in bias white gated life…open up and see the truth, step into the light Jimmy, step into the light!
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Lol!
Jimmy, I’m not sure if you understand how evidence works. You must prove against the norm to a much greater degree than one must prove behavior within the norm. Do you follow?
So, for instance, if I stipulate that once a mugger pulled a gun on me, that I was afraid for my life, it is accepted as ‘within the norm’ of most likely reactions to such an event. The defense lawyer for the mugger cannot demand that I provide PROOF that I was afraid! It is unnecessary. On the other hand, if the mugger was to assert that I was actually NOT afraid at all, but was, in fact, calm and fully within my faculties, then that would require proof, because it is a very unlikely state of mind for a person being held at gunpoint by a stranger.
In the same way, if people are being held involuntarily as human property, without rights and without power, it is not necessary to PROVE that they were in a state of abuse. That would be normal for people in such a position. It becomes necessary however, to prove that persons living under such disadvantage would be content and happy, because that would be abnormal.
That is why sharinalr is asking you for proof.
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I think it is you who misapprehends. It is always up to the accuser to make their case first. When a man is accused by the State of a crime, they mostly plead not guilty. NOT so much because they actually believe THAT. But as a strategy because they know it is the State’s burden of proof to prove their case. The defence does not even HAVE TO make a case.
It is incumbent on you people here to prove MOST American bondsmen were subjected to the lash. I maintain the opposite. The burden of proof is on you. You first made the charge many decades ago.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
In your quick efforts to type without thinking you helped in proving my simple point for me.
For starter you are not in a court of law but a debate and as the rule of debate goes it is up to you to support said claims. Here is starter knowledge on that (http://www.wikihow.com/Debate), but I have no doubt you are verse in google as it appears you ran right to the source I knew you would to argue this point.
Secondly half truths are not facts. They are as good as lies and this is what you have been doing. You can not claim to know the conditions of a vast majority of people and then back peddle in trying to claim “no one knows” or the convenient some when it suites you. You have taken the stance that you know and as such the burden to support those claims falls on you. Not anyone else in this room.
Thirdly I will kindly take your own source in the Slave Narratives and use them against you. The narratives are an account of 2300 slaves (from 17 states) of the four million the site claims. Accounts recorded by whites and was not written by the blacks you claimed did it. Of those accounts (13 people) that can be read online, the majority did not account much of anything about masters other than who owned them. There focus was on their marriage and parents and age etc. Those that accounted good things really only focused on how they were treated and did not account for treatment of other slaves. That alone blows your idea out of the water as a possible alley in how a Majority was treated. The remaining bad experience reported being beaten, lack of food, sleeping on floors, and run away attempts. Interesting enough one of the “good master” slaves stated master was good to them, but noted it was not the same for others. (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/reading.html)
Lastly You are the only one that made a claim here. My contention was that you spout a but of lies and bs that you can not support. You have successfully helped me prove such by follow up comments showing a severe case of duck and dodge. Presenting one account of a white man vs the account of a black man who actually had to live the cruelty is equal to you claiming what bothers Asians as a white man.
You got your opinion and by all means…you are free to it, but you may want to try a dictionary to determine the difference between facts and opinions.
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Another source with food for thought. The sources are at the bottom since I am sure credibility will be brought as the new excuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatment_of_slaves_in_the_United_States
🙂
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“Talking politics or race is strictly forbidden in the white community so you have to look for subtle behaviors or comments that tip you off.”
In my observation, this isn’t true.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Of course not.
This is actually not true when given facts have already been stipulated to. For example, if I stipulate that I indeed did break into your house, it’s not up to you to prove OBVIOUS things such as:
1) You were frightened
2) You had an adrenaline rush
3) You were agitated
43) You were not thinking straight
The judge is not going to ask you whether you secreted any of this supposed adrenaline into a container for examination by the court! All of the above list follows when someone is breaking into your house… you don’t have to prove jack!
I was not saying that MOST were subjected to the lash. I was saying that most were abused in some way..
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The very act of slavery is abusive. If you are bought, sold, held against your will, watch your children being taken away, etc…these are all forms of abuse. Even those slaves “lucky” to have never been beaten, burned, raped, tortured, whipped, have limbs taken and so on were abused emotionally. This emotional abuse, which went on for 400 years, likely imprinted on the DNA of these men and women and likely was handed down generation after generation, likely leading to all sorts of adverse emotional conditions that still linger to this day….
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@William the Conquerer
The mindset back then was that slaves were treated good and liked living that way. The thing I find odd is that is actually the mindset that Jimmy is presenting right now. It is laughable and almost cartoonish, but my folly would be in believing he is not dead serious.
He is peddling stormfront material, while trying to claim to respect all men.
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@ Jimmy:
Why do you keep referring to that clown Nehemiah Adam? And it’s enslaved, not bonded, the ‘masters’ were enslavers. And no Jimmy, slavery wasn’t benign. I have read many first hand accounts of slavery such as the Federal Writers Project of the mid to late 1930’s. I also have my own families history. If they enjoyed being slaves so much they wouldn’t have run up to Canada subsequently freeze their arses off.
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Making a moral defense of slavery on the grounds of “good treatment” is not at all dissimilar from defending the morality of monocracy on the grounds of “benevolent despots”. It’s not about how slaves were treated, either individually or in aggregate, it’s about the principle and precedent of the thing. Slaves are not in possession of their own bodies, which is to say they have no right to defend themselves in the event that they are abused, a right that conservatives would otherwise deem sacred:
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/celia/celiaaccount.html
Even monarchs allowed their peasants the theoretical freedom to emigrate or “vote with their feet”, if they objected to the monarch’s statecraft; slaves had no such freedom by 1861:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
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You know something? I just came up with a new theory as to why these white racist “slavery wasn’t that bad” expounders really feel that way. They are into S&M. They get off on the idea of people being subjugated physically and mentally. Are you a masochist or a sadist Jimmy?
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Mockery is one of the last resorts of those who either consciously or subconsciously know that their arguments are on shaky ground, else they would not be so defensive. Earlier yesterday, a responce from the one who hides behind the moniker of William the Conqueror chastised me for generalising, whilst completely ignoring his own, in that, he lumps all, or most all and certainly all White unreconstructed Southerners into one generalised basket. The word for people like that is “hypocrite” And when doing that in cases like this drastically reduces ones integrity/credibility. However, when I found tyme to respond to that, which I wanted to, I could not find it, now presuming he removed it. Hhhmmm.
I get carried away with it, sometymes, and even found myself starting to on this post as well, but thought better of it as stated above. Hence I edited myself.
Most you people here are very much like me. You believe you are right. And you can find sources to back you up. Leastwise, I am bold enough to be here to contend with you on your own turf. For without me and those like me, either this particular page would have long ago withered away to die on the vine, or this page would be cluttered with a whole bunch of back-slapping “atta boy” talk and postings.
NOW, one of you people referred to Nehemiah Adams as a clown. WHAT A JERK-OFF YOU ARE!!
Look him up on the ‘Net. He was a yankee abolitionists, JERK!!! (This is not mockery, but anger, and this we are allowed)
Look him up unless you people here are afeared to. I double-dog dare you!!
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NOW, one of you people referred to Nehemiah Adams as a clown. WHAT A JERK-OFF YOU ARE!!
Come on now! I did read about Nehemiah and he was a clown. Just because he referred to himself as an abolitionist didn’t mean he wasn’t a racist.
get carried away with it, sometymes, and even found myself starting to on this post as well, but thought better of it as stated above. Hence I edited myself.
I see you can’t be taken seriously getting over- emotional and all.
Leastwise, I am bold enough to be here to contend with you on your own turf.
Why thank you for gracing us with your presence. You contend with people in order to be contentious nothing else. But everyone needs a hobby!
(This is not mockery, but anger, and this we are allowed)
Well this is mockery! Why are you speaking in the third tense?
Look him up unless you people here are afeared to. I double-dog dare you!!
I’m not afeared of nothing sir, or is it massa? Why bring dogs into it?
Seriously the only purposes you serve are for comical relief, unrelenting stupidity and misinformation. For those who wish to debate this racist buffoon, have at it!
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So interesting you know most abolitionists, though thinking/believing it wrong to own people also cared not a whit for Black people.
Because I have been telling that to others for years. lincoln himself, though opposed to human ownership, was also listed amongst those who wanted Blacks deported.
Good for you, Herneith!!
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“Mockery is one of the last resorts of those who either consciously or subconsciously know that their arguments are on shaky ground, else they would not be so defensive.”—Not necessarily. Mockery can also be the result of arrogance. In your case it most certainly appears to the be result of your shaky argument and at this point who would take you seriously? You can’t even honestly admit the weakness in your argument. You just write another “holier than thou” response in hopes it will exonerate you of your lies. You simply are a typing joke.
“Most you people here are very much like me.”—We are not like you. When most of us make a claim we can back it up. Whether it be family historical accounts of historical accounts on the internet. I used YOUR very source to counter you. You don’t even bother to research what you say. You believe it so you say it. You are simply intellectually dishonest. You consciously do this.
“For without me and those like me, either this particular page would have long ago withered away to die on the vine, or this page would be cluttered with a whole bunch of back-slapping “atta boy” talk and postings.”—Or we will just go to other pages and discuss actual issues. Coming here for the occasional laugh or brushing up on skills is a necessary evil.
At any rate. You are full of shyte.
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Jimmy…..”Earlier yesterday, a responce from the one who hides behind the moniker of William the Conqueror chastised me for generalising, whilst completely ignoring his own, in that, he lumps all, or most all and certainly all White unreconstructed Southerners into one generalised basket.”
“While Blacks were being tortured in the south, whites in the North were marching with MLK to get the laws to change. These men and women risked a lot to speak out in a society dominated by rich white conservatives. The same is true this very moment. Have you seen the video at the Wisconsin state capital? Thousands of protesters of every color, every gender, every religion protesting another shooting of an unarmed black man…while the shooting was deplorable the unity is beautiful…”
Directly above is the comment you cherry picked while ignoring the entire message and failing to respond to it because you have no argument against the GOOD in people or in any factual post. Your responses to everybody here are some of the most childish I have ever read. This latest comment is an OUT RIGHT LIE! I made no post about you generalizing, zero!!! Yet here you are telling people it got erased, I didn’t even know you could erase your comment once you hit post, you are a complete liar, just like DA JOKER before you, you LIE to try to get a leg up on some invisible plain of existence, you need to get a life Jimmy, plain and simple…. It is so obvious you read and reread these responses until you can find the smallest mole hill of an argument, most the time your response has almost nothing to do with the post but only a sentence or word you snagged out of the paragraph. Here you claim that I generalized about the North and the South, however you made that assumption and that argument as my post had NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS….and now several post away you remember my post as a argument about the North and south and how racist each were, all to prejudice the present reader…SAD and LAME you are. The post was a letter to Rayfield and to lions saying that all white people are not bad, it was one of the FEW times I speak highly of whites…This is the lowest thing I have seen you do and now I wash my hands of you because I know now that you have ZERO CHARACTER and NO STRENGTH as a man…Tisk, tisk, tisk.
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@ Everyone:
Did Europeans Sell Their Own into Slavery??
If ‘Africans’ ‘SOLD’ THEIR own into ‘slavery’ (certainly not getting any sort of cut of the billions of pounds sterling, land, resources, power, or primitive accumulation of the corporate Trans Atlantic Trade!) then where are the profits this miniscule cadre of so-called ‘Africans’ realized?
If some historically insignificant few Africans participated in the global slave trade that created capitalism then they, like the middle managers of City Bank now, got diddly squat compared to the upper echelon ‘Wall Street’ benefits of what the corporate slave trade brought next: colonialism.
One reason this string has sunk into endless, foolish discussions over what ‘race’ is, rather than staying focused on the subject of the string, is because the basic question of this string was settled long ago. ‘Africans’ did NOT ‘sell’ themselves into ‘slavery’. The very linguistic terms of that statement make no historical sense.
So let’s just get back to the POINT by introducing a new thought: that so-called ‘Whites’ have always sold THEIR own into slavery (both in Europe and in America). Who did they sell specifically? The Irish, among others. One flaw of the endless talk about race is, that, 1. while going on and on about opinions and spouting rhetoric, few commentators are offering sufficient documentation, books, articles, academic and anthropological theories and debates to raise the discussion to the level of any genuine intellectual rigor, and, 2. when actual data and theory, particularly physical anthropology and cultural anthropology, are offered, those particularly who argue that ‘Africans’ ‘sold’ themselves, promptly IGNORE the books, authors, and scientific theories offered while themselves offering pseudo science that they back up with little more than their own belief, like their own propositions are religions, requiring faith.
So did ‘whites’ sell their own? Yes, and murdered and brutalized and dehumanized them too. A book that proves this is Nell Irvin Painter’s “The History of White[sic] People”. In a review of the book by Jeanne Willette, found at:
http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/the-history-of-white-people-by-nell-irvin-painter/,
Willette quotes a very important portion of the book:
“For Painter, the Civil War and the extended blood letting over the question of slavery verses the rights of a state to own human beings is only but one part of the question of “race” that, by the nineteenth century had begun to define American thinking. As she writes,
In a society largely based on African slavery and founded in the era that invented the very idea of race, race as color has always played a prominent role. It has shaped the determination not only of race but also of citizenship, beauty, virtue, and the like. The idea of blackness, if not the actual color of skin, continues to play a leading role in American race thinking. Today’s Americans, bred in the ideology of skin color as racial difference, find it difficult to recognize the historical coexistence of potent American hatreds against people accepted as white, Irish Catholics. But anti-Catholicism has a long and often bloody national history, one that expressed itself in racial language and a violence that we nowadays attach most readily to race-as-color bigotry, when, in fact, religious hatred arrived in Western culture much earlier, lasted much longer, and killed more people. If we fail to connect the dots between class and religion, we lose whole layers of historical meaning. Hatred of black people did not preclude hatred of other white people—those considered different and inferior—and flare-ups of deadly violence against stigmatized whites.”…..”
Now, I submit this as a means of trying to get us back on track, and also as a means to turn the prism we are looking through a few degrees askew. I raise this not because I believe the oppression of the Irish is comparable to 300 years of Africans being stolen and sent into chattel agro-industrial slavery, nor because I believe that ‘Europeans’ gained the full benefit of racism, exploitation, and Euro-slavery (feudalism), nor that Americans as individuals gained the full benefit of the vicious, ugly racism turned against the Irish here in the United States:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/27/1265498/-The-slaves-that-time-forgot#
I think none of those things any more than I think ‘Africans’ in any historically or economically significant numbers benefitted from ‘selling’ each other. No, The true culprit, as I have always argued, was and is CAPITALISM, not the masses of Europeans nor the masses of Africans–the slave traders of global productivity and wealth were the RULING CLASS. The builders of the slave ships and of the New York City immigrant tenements housing a million wage slaves in The North to man the machineries of the industrial revolution as a profit machine, were the RULING CLASS (and it little matters what ‘color’ they were, economically speaking).
I present this reality that the Irish were ‘sold’ by fellow Europeans only as a means of suggesting how this string’s basic question and any other such question about history and economics can yield differing answers, differing ideologies, and differing realizations depending upon how the questions is asked, in what terms, for what purpose, and depending on who is doing the asking.
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Slight correction–
‘depending upon how the questions ARE asked’, not how the questions ‘is’ asked.
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@Rayfield….”I think none of those things any more than I think ‘Africans’ in any historically or economically significant numbers benefitted from ‘selling’ each other. No, The true culprit, as I have always argued, was and is CAPITALISM, not the masses of Europeans nor the masses of Africans–the slave traders of global productivity and wealth were the RULING CLASS.”
I agree 100% Rayfield. Capitalism by definition is an immoral system, it teaches that taking advantage of the next person is not only acceptable but that in order to be successful it is “necessary”.
Can you imagine if the Gospel of Jesus Christ had been a lesson in Capitalism? Conservatives have absolutely no concept of Hipocracy because if they did they would realize that most everything they believe in or propagate is in direct opposition to the next. They want a christian state here in the U.S., however capitalism is the direct opposite of Christianity. Christianity teaches to give, to share and to never take advantage of your neighbors or your enemies. Capitalism teaches us that it is good to cheat, lie or steal under the guise of the word capitalism.
Some of the things I have seen or been a victim of recently by AT&T, Volkswagon, US Bank, etc were head shaking to say the least. The word capitalizing perfectly describes what these companies do to their customers. You can’t have a country based on family values and love thy neighbor if at the same time you are trying to get over on them…This country has an identity crisis of mammoth proportions..
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@Waller
That’s historically inaccurate. The Irish weren’t considered White during the periods of Irish Antipathy, however their pigmentation allowed them to assimilate into Americana. Similarly, Jordanians aren’t considered White unless they’ve been sufficiently Americanized.
Firstly, that’s dangerously reductionist. Poor/Working Whites were/are more than happy to control and criminalize Afro-Americans on behalf of the Planter/Ruling class; they are/were most definitely accomplices of Capitalism. (White) unions also have a history of excluding Afro-Am membership. White socialists have a history of opposing Afro-American agency and positive identity. Poor/Working Whites are not our “natural” allies. This not to say that alliances can’t be made on the axis of Class, but Class consciousness doesn’t negate race and can not come at the expense of Afro-American cultural identity and self determination.
Secondly, it absolutely matters what race they are. It is not a coincidence that the World’s Ruling Class is predominantly of recent European ancestry, but a result of global White Supremacy. It’s not a coincidence that most of the men who find themselves harassed by law enforcement officers (LEO) and ensnared in the American gulag are Latino and Afro-American. European and Euro-American capitalists have and will align themselves with European proletariats and Westernized PoC to control, colonize, and exploit the non-White world and render non-White people disposable in their imperial-capitalist endeavor.
Where in the Greater Americas (or indeed the World) did the overthrow of the Capitalist Class lead to racial assimilation? There is a very strong Socialist tradition in Latin America that has yet to dissolve the Colorline and/or bring about the end of race. Also, where did you get this idea that ethnic and cultural ties must be severed and destroyed before class struggle can come to fruition? Few if any of the heavy hitters in the history of Afro-Socialism advocated the abolition of African and Afro-Diaspora culture. In fact, many like Amilcar Cabral believed that re-Africanization is a vital component of anti-capitalist and anti-colonial revolutionary thought among African/Black people.
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@ William;
A-men. Well stated, Bro. Today I was teaching students about ethics and about the rational basis of compassion and empathy. I am influenced by His Holiness, The 14th Dali Lama, Tenzin Gyatso / Kundun. The Dali Lama teaches that we ought to be compassionate to each other not only because it is correct, but because only compassion can save us all, preserve the human race–end war, end the burning of fossil fuels, fairly distribute food, clean water, and natural resources among all the masses regardless of their wealth. Nothing else but compassion and ethical behavior is SUSTAINABLE, Kundun teaches. One of the things we must do if we are going to survive–if our children are going to survive, is abolish capitalism and start over to create a world we can all truly share (forgive, put away hatred and competition, spread education and nourishment and affordable medical care for Africa, Asia, India, and Latin America as well as for the poor sectors of the Americas (the US and Canada, that is). He teaches this wherever he visits and speaks. I saw him in Upstate New York when I was a grad student and again in Miami, when I was teaching at the University of Miami. He makes no bones about it: we are all brothers and sisters, and we had better learn to believe so, if we want to survive as a specie.
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Excuse me, but that is a bunch of malarkey. How are you, or anyone else like the Dalai Lama, going to rid people of human nature? Ever watch Survivor? They are a micro-cosm of human nature. One person works their butt off trying to contribute whilst another sets on their behindsides, doing as little as possible, all the while the hard working one is observing this, getting resentful by the second.
From each according to their ability to each according to their needs?
What about the lazy lay-about? Is someone going to be the regulator? How are you going to get someone to contribute for the “greater good” if they just dont want to? And who is going to be the inforcer of these rules and who is appointed/selected to be the appointor?
What you are saying/proposing runs counter to human nature. I dont know what the answer is, but what you are suggesting is not it.
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Reblogged this on Ardent Fangirl.
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@Rayfield…..”He makes no bones about it: we are all brothers and sisters, and we had better learn to believe so, if we want to survive as a specie.”
Thank you Rayfield and I couldn’t agree more with what the Dahli Lama said. Capitalism in itself is a system that goes against the grain of the human spirit. Most people have a problem taking advantage of another, thats why corporations spend billions of dollars each year on training people how to take advantage in a subversive manner. Capitalism breeds mistrust, dissension, anger, depression, bankruptcy, debt, inequality, poverty, guilt, love of money and it’s pursuit instead of love of thy neighbor and the pursuit of happiness, which should be about family values and human pride. Capitalism breeds “UNHEALTHY” competition and creates an all or nothing atmosphere instead of competition that creates brotherhood and the act of helping each other attain success and one that completely ends hunger and homelessness.
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Human beings are not, NEVER ARE NOR CAN BE, as you idealists believe.
Anyone here know anything about anthropologists studies of primitive peoples? I dont either, but would bet they find envy and jealousy there just as well. I bet tribal societies experience those who just will not do their part because why should they if they get equal access to everything the whole tribe gets. And I bet those who do their part complain.
We are not tribal. People work for a living. Because almost no one on this Earth knows how to provide their daily meals anymore. If we had to, my guess is that within the year, the Earth’s population would be decreased by some 95% because of starvation. So we work, buy what others have mass produced.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, The People’s Republic of China and all other communist countries have proven beyond a doubt their way not only does not work, but SHALL FAIL!
Arent you people here paying attention?!
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@ Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Hunter-gatherer societies tend to be way more egalitarian, politically and materially, than agricultural or industrial ones. For one thing, they do not have huge armies with which to rob their neighbours.
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The Indians who were on this part of the world warred on their neighbours long afore we ever came here. However many thousands of years ago it was they came here, they too were immigrants and stole the land from the native animals already here, driving some to extinction with there incessant hunting/killing.
And huge armies is relative. Some certainly were extremely military oriented, whilst others were indeed peacefully oriented. And the strong preyed upon the weak. AGAIN, such is human nature. Communism NEVER changed human nature.
Just like in the book “ANIMAL FARM” said, “All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.” So, who gets to be the leader who decides who gets what? And who gets to choose who the leader is?
If you here think otherwise, you live in a fools land. Human nature is NOT basically good, it is basically selfish. As it teaches in the Bible, the immediate children of judging good and evil are bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. Human traits all.
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Rayfield and Abagond…
Western civilization is a destructive and FINITE society. It is based on consumption, competition, war and greed. If it weren’t for the good half of society we would have already burned through all the forest, killed off all the animals and choked the ecosystem out. Every single culture and system created by the white man has failed. There is not one single example where a government, economy, culture has endured for longer than a few hundred years..WHY? It is an unsustainable, evil force driven by greed and the destruction of others for the good of oneself. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce which societies, cultures or “governments” have proven the most successful, most sustaining and most compatible with the environment…tribal societies from Africa, Asia and South America have survived nearly “unchanged” for as many as 65,000 years according to Anthropologist. These tribes “SHARE” in all daily duties, share the food, share property, take care of each others children, adopt children who have lost their parents, they have a court system but it is rarely needed, they do not exist to consume but only to survive and live happily within a family construct.
These tribes are arguably the most successful, moral and, without any knowledge of religion, the closest to a Christian existence than any war mongering Darwinist Western society…
These tribes would have had a chance to last another 60,000 years, however with the introduction of alcohol, religion (guilt and shame) and disease brought about by colonization and the ever creeping destruction of land by consumption these tribes are beginning to feel the long and evil arm of Capitalism!
http://www.enkicharity.com/jungle-tribes.html
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Ah, nice to hear from the self-loathing, shuckin’&jivin’ White Sambo. He reminds me of the scene from one of Shakespeare’s plays when a man is saying, “OUT, damn spot!” This he must say always regarding his White skin.
You said, in part, “tribal societies from … Asia and South America have survived nearly “unchanged” for as many as 65,000 years according to Anthropologist.”
I suppose unchanged is fair to say. And had the world been like them, chances are neither you, nor I, nor anyone else would even be able to experience this religion you people here call “diversity”, nor be able to communicate as we do here. For had we still been like them, we all would be tribal, existing day to day, gathering food, living in huts, only knowing about the world within our own walking distance.
It is because of Western man we have trains, planes and automobiles. Indoor plumbing, electric lights and all other such devices powered by electricity, internal combustion and/or steam engines shortening sea travel from months or years to days or weeks. International and mass communications via radio, television, satellites. All this and more are ONLY because of White men, White Western Civilisation.
Moreover, because those Asian and South American tribes left behind written records, we know they oftentymes waged war on massive scales. Who knows how many millions of people, civilians not just warriors, were simply slaughtered over the millennium because that is how it was done.
Point is, Mr. GLIBeral, people are and always have been and always will be people. Filled with the first born of judging good and evil, “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition.”
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Jimmy Shirley…..
“Ah, nice to hear from the self-loathing, shuckin’&jivin’ White Sambo. He reminds me of the scene from one of Shakespeare’s plays when a man is saying, “OUT, damn spot!” This he must say always regarding his White skin.”
Sticks and stones Bro, sticks and stones….
It is not the color of my skin that bothers me but the actions of Conservative White Men which I hold in contempt, like you and your father upstairs in his recliner yelling down the basement stairs to get a life…!
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@abagond
They also didn’t have armies with which to protect themselves from being robbed, or seize the land taken from them.
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“Reclaim” is a better word than “seize” in that context.
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If anything the writer of this article comes off as a guilty or shamed African American that can’t accept or come to terms with the truth of the matter. Beyond the hypocrisies the article is pinning fault in the wrong place instead of holding the “blame” equally where it should be. Why is it that on many nations in Africa they were able to own up to it and in America Blacks are last to look at the problem with both eyes? This is where compassion and mutual understanding heals because like many whites looking back to old Europeans treatment of their own kind hurts, the same is true for African Americans. Its hard to face the reality of the situation and try as hard as possible to ignore the hard truth. You cone from a lineage of defeated people (by your own “kind”). And while many of your mothers were stocking harems in Africa and fathers beheaded, you were sold , as per status quo. The sting that comes from realizing whether white Europeans came or not your fate would have been very much the sane is real. How do you think a white man who’s ancestors were Roman slaves in some mine feels? Sad reality, for your sake, the writer of this article is in a steep denial due to seemingly understanding on some level yet relies in many deflection tactics.
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Scion
Perhaps you need to do research. They would not come out the same in that the type of “slavery” was not the same. Chattel slavery was made possible in America when it became race based. Slavery in Africa was usually an indentured servitude and did not stop an individual from advancing in society.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
That may very well be true, but the point here is a lot of whites loves to claim African’s sold their own, but they are ignorant of the type of slavery and what it meant for those serving it.
I know some whites who still believe west Africans were the only slaves. It is said that slaves came from central Africa as well.
It is all an effort to pass the buck and not acknowledge why there slavery was worse in the sense that they were meant to keep blacks down and keep them down.
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Scion, what are you a scion of?
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@Thaddeus ‘that’s exactly what this meant in the case of much of the family and clan-based slavery that was going on in Africa.’ That is an utter ignorant and shameless lie. African woman could walk out of their marriage a day after it with ZERO consequence. Once you married a slave she was free. she could leave you literally the next day.
Marriage to a slave woman did not IN ANY WAY prolong her captivity and was not the only way out of slavery.
Some tribes freed you once you spoke the language.
Others once you could use the money you earned doing extra work to buy your freedom.
All considered children to be born free.
In many tribes the laws of the land protected slaves from violence in the same way as free men and women.
African slavery like all slavery was cruel, but it wasn’t a patch on American slavery.
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This is the most arrogant piece i have seen in a while… You make it seem like businessmen were making these sales. And African slave owners were just fine and dandy with their slaves?? Have you never read anything on the treatment of African slaves in Africa?? I am sure they loved having their testicles cut off and the women enjoyed being raped. I am sure that women who had one child loved having their breasts cut off and seared with an iron poker so they could not feed another one. You keep on spitting this bullshit you call truth. In the mean time I will know what history has said about it.. Whites do not give a flying fuck about slavery anymore because it isn’t relevant any longer. Nobody in America is paying for the sins of their ancestors.. They are reaping the benefit.. If america was such a bad place would they not have fled the country back to Africa??? No.. They stayed because this was the land of oppurtunity and they had the firm belief that it would change and their future family would have a good life here… if you want to spout off about slavery you need to look into mental slavery and look at who holds the leash on that today.. i will give you a hint.. They rap about cars and money and drugs and killing their fellow man.. They give free money every month and a card you can buy food with.. They offer just enough to live in poverty but not enough to get out of it unless you stand up on your feet and go do it.. The way it was intended.. And they keep on giving all they can as long as you vote for their party… Who am i talking about?
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Grizzlyjds…..Tell me this, how many African nations have ventured out and committed genocide against another nation or group of people…NONE! How many nations have dropped Nuclear weapons on innocent women and children…I could go on all day about the evil of capitalism and the HYPOCRISY of this nation and it’s brain washing of it’s masses to subvert the actual outcome of capitalism, which is money is WORSHIPED and GOD is only a means of keeping the masses subdued. You talk about slavery as it ended 160 years ago but you are a fool and obviously someone born and raised in white privilege like myself. You have No IDEA how lucky you are to be white in America and as such you have remained ignorant of others who are being slaughtered to this day by an evil Nazi SS law enforcement and a judicial system that arrest white mass murders by starting a conversation with them and calmly walking them to the car and who slams young children at a pool party to the ground because they were “TOO LOUD”!….I have news for you and your racist evil unchristian conservatives, your a dying breed. Half of the white population is Liberal and half the white population stands hand in hand with the people of color in this country…YOU ARE THE MINORITY and your evil, uncaring, white privilege and colonizing ways will soon be nothing but a memory…It is time for the meek and good loving people of the world to “INHERIT THE EARTH”!
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@grizzlyjds
“Have you never read anything on the treatment of African slaves in Africa??”—I read an interesting bit about Slavery in Africa. There was no universal type. There were different types used but none was chattel type slavery. What you mentioned actual was slavery under Muslim or Islamic rule. There is another post for that. http://www.islammonitor.org/index.php?option=com_content&id=2842
“Whites do not give a flying fuck about slavery anymore because it isn’t relevant any longer.”—-Funny I had a debate with a few whites who not only brought up slavery but used it to say “they did it too”. If you did not care you would not bring it up.
“If america was such a bad place would they not have fled the country back to Africa???”—To yet another continent raped and pillaged by whites. I wonder.
“if you want to spout off about slavery you need to look into mental slavery and look at who holds the leash on that today.. i will give you a hint.. They rap about cars and money and drugs and killing their fellow man.. They give free money every month and a card you can buy food with.”—–Most rappers are pretty rich, so I guess the card they get every month is a credit card. Not to mention they are not giving anyone any money. You actually must be attempting to describe the government. Though who trusts any of those parties?
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Sharinalr…How are you my Beautiful Friend? I missed you guys, I have been very busy with work and have not been able to get over here to visit with all of my Abagond friends, the most intelligent and insightful people I know quite frankly. I can never pass up the chance to shove my verbiage down the throat of an ignorant white privileged brainwashed racist capitalist though so I made time for this winner! Good to see/hear from you guys, really…
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Lets chronicle the life of the slave in America to present day. Men in ships sailed halfway around the world to purchase African men, women and children for enslavement. On the journey back to America 20% or more died or became ill due to malnutrition, dehydration and disease; these men and women and children were tossed into the ocean whether they were alive or dead. Once here in America Blacks had less human rights than a dog and in approximately 200 years were killed to the tune of 8 million, 2 million more than the Jewish holocaust. Eventually slavery became unpopular with a large portion of the population and the world and eventually it led to the Civil War. After the abashment of slavery a lot of present day morons believe that Blacks were magically given the same opportunities as whites, like a Genie came out of a bottle and made every white man righteous and non racist…Well that didn’t happen. All the Emancipation Proclamation did was free the slaves, making it illegal to own a human being…It did not change the laws regarding Blacks and every day living or the hearts of white men. The emancipation proclamation was replaced with Jim Crow laws that made being Black an emotional crime; Blacks could not testify in court, Blacks could not own land in white areas, Blacks could not marry whites, Blacks could not come to white areas unless they were conducting business set forth by white men, Blacks could not attend white schools and white teachers could not teach black students…the laws go on and on and on. These laws were PURPOSELY set forth to keep Black people down as low as the laws would permit. This white supremacist conspiracy of 300 years would leave a systemic scar on any group of people, especially whites who clearly felt inferior to Blacks or they wouldn’t have been so frightened to allow them to fail or succeed on their own based on a level and fair playing field. These laws were enacted for the next 100 YEARS in many states, MOSTLY SOUTHERN. In Alabama it was illegal for a Black man to marry a white woman until 2012 when they finally were MADE to remove it from the books. Black Americans have NEVER been given a chance to succeed or fail with a LEVEL playing field. A white man has it many many many times easier than a person of color has it in this country. The laws finally changed in 1965 but again that does not change the hearts of white men and in 1965 whites have had a 365 year head start on Blacks regarding land ownership, business ownership, education, real estate, politics, financial and so on. In 1965 all the business’s, all the land, all the houses, everything had already been owned by white men…How is a Black man going to catch up to a white system that has had a 365 YEAR HEAD START? So when I hear a white privilege willful ignorant person say really ignorant statements like slavery didn’t keep other people down and the statement is coming from a white man who has never been Black, never been discriminated against, whose family were never slaves and whose ignorance could fill the state of Texas…I stand up and I lay into that southern racist because he makes whites look worse than we already do…I liken the comparison of white success and Black success to Monopoly with your cousins during summer vacation. Have you ever had your cousins start a Monopoly game and you didn’t want to play so you opted out. Then 3 hours later you hear them having so much fun you ask if you can play. As you grab the only play piece left, the thimble, you notice that all the hotels are gone, most of the houses are gone and the only real estate left is the reading railroad and the utility company. Not to mention the bank has a very thin amount of money. This is my example of how America has worked and how Blacks have been fighting a huge uphill battle trying to catch up to a system that is still working against them and who gave itself a 300 year head start….and then has the nerve to say, “Whats wrong, slavery followed by 150 years of conspiracy and oppression should be holding you back, it wouldn’t hold back us whites…”…….Morons!
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William the Conqueror,
Have you flayed off that accursed ‘white” spot yet?? Your life must be miserable, a living hell as a self-loathing White man, cursed to look into the mirror nearly everyday, eh?
You people keep harping about “White privilege” as though that is just plain wrong! Get over your stupid selves. Isnt ethnic privilege the purview of every nation on Earth?? Muslim privilege within all those muzzie nations? Chinese privilege within China?
WTF is wrong with that, you SMF’s? Can you honestly say China would bend over backwards and kiss the arse of an African Negro, JUST to show the rest of the world that they are “”enlightened””? You really think those muzzie nations gives a rat’s arse WTF you people think about them??!!
If so, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona to sell!!
Y’all need to get y’alls collective heads out of y’alls collective arse’s and enter the real world!!!
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Jimmy Shirley…Wow you must really be lonely in that basement of yours if all you have to do is sit and watch your computer waiting for me to post something. I knew the moment I typed my first word I would draw you out from under your rock. It is not the whites I oppose, it is the whites who play willfully ignorant to perpetuate their self imposed brainwashing..we’re number one, we’re number one…Well I have news for you Shirley, you white conservative racist are the only people in this world who believe that anymore and the rest of the world is laughing at you all. The Jig is up, no longer does the world see white conservative men as superior and actually they see them as the insecure arrogant impotent charlatans they really are and their bigotry and discrimination and atrocities will no longer be tolerated in this new age of LIBERALISM…I see that of all that I spoke of in my last post you had no rebuttal and no argument to refute the facts….but that is par for course. Say hello to your Mom for me….
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Ah, Billyboy,
I had read your diatribe, and chose to not offer commentary, until the last.
Still, you yourself ignored the jist of my comment, namely, that of the rest of the world’s countries that have a dominate culture are too smart to kiss the arse of any minority the way self-hating Whites in the country do, keeping their faces firmly attached to the backsides of nearly any minority here.
And regardless of what it looks like, I do not despise individuals of any of the race’s living here, but neither do I suck them, like your kind do.
I treat them with all due dignity and courtesy. Nothing better, nothing less.
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Jimmy Shirley My poor abstinent friend…..
Exerts from comment A…
1. …within all those muzzie nations?
2. …you SMF’s?
3. …kiss the arse of an African Negro…
4. You really think those muzzie nations…
Exerts from comment B directly following comment A…
“I do not despise individuals of any of the race’s living here, but neither do I suck them, like your kind do.
I treat them with all due dignity and courtesy. Nothing better, nothing less.”
Can you please point out the dignity and courtesy you showed these groups of people who have done nothing to you in regards to this debate but get used by two white privileged guys acting like the white supremacist our conservative governments have taught us to be?
You are really losing your ability to hold yourself to a moral standard any idiot could maintain. Jimmy you wrote these two comments in succession, have you lost it completely? Are you capable of rational thought or simple comprehension? Oh wait, you are a conservative and hypocrisy is their best characteristic, my bad…
If giving others their dignity was one of your traits as a, and I say this lightly, human being, you would not be trolling the internet looking for sites you can spread your hate and discontent. Why don’t you join one of your void of color supremacist sites, after all they compromise 90% of all the hate groups in America.
You be good Jimmy and have a Happy July 4th…XOXOXO
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@William
Nice to see you are doing well! 🙂
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@Jimmy
Acknowledging a wrong is not self-hating.
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“you would not be trolling the internet looking for sites you can spread your hate and discontent.”
Quite frankly, I was pondering just how did I come about this site, and as best as I can recollect, it came via someone forwarding it to me in an email.
Moreover, the HATE and discontent I have been seeing lo these past many years comes from the tanned kkk, oka the naacp. I hold them culpable in that Dylan Roof thought the Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of White supremacy. Ever since they declared war on us in 1991, every chance they got, they proclaimed to high heaven the Flag is akin to the swastika and every other deplorable lie they can imagine. And the mass gliberal media did their part in publicising their hate-filled rants. And sooner or later, someone was going to take them at their word, and deciding to be a murderer, photographed himself with said item. For this, I lay blame on the naacp. Had they never so done, had they never been so successful in their hate-induced rage’s, had they never so done with the willing complicity of the gliberal media, Roof may or may not have become the domestic terrorist. But he certainly would not have affiliated his actions with the Confederate Battle Flag.
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@Sharinalr….thank you, I owe it all to our brilliant president who took a disastrous economy and blossomed it into a vibrant ever growing sustainable market of equality….wink**.
Jimmy….you seem to think I have no white heroes but I have so very many of them…Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Sheen, Bill Clinton, Einstein, Harvey Milk, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Paine, John Brown, Susan B. Anthony, Wesley Clark, John Kerry, Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Joan Baez, Elizabeth Warren…should I go on?
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Reblogged this on ambiguousgreyzone and commented:
never knew this
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here’s my opinion on this topic… I didn’t get to choose what I look like or what my race is etc… I have no control over things that have happened in the past. And this should be the past we should all be past this! Every race , religion, minority,etc has gone through horrible unjustifiable things. We are supposed to learn from the mistakes of the past and move forward better. If Africans years ago traded people of there own nationality, well than that was wrong! If Americans traded things for people to make them slaves that was wrong!! What happened to the Jewish people was wrong!!! The way women were treated and owned was wrong!!! A lot of wrong has happened in the past we need to move forward and stop this !!!!!!@!
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You are right that this is not an argument to excuse the white racist slavery, but it does go to prove that the evil of slavery is a universal human potential and not particular to any race. In other words, blacks and whites are the same when it comes to potential for good and evil.
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Tariku, do you also believe in Santa Claus? You have chewed and swallowed the red herring, my Dear Sir. Certain brainwashed commentators here are so conditioned to imitate the ideologies of Anglo supremacy, even the progressives among them, that although several well read and articulate commentators for ABAGOND have many times posted completely rational, lucid, and critical analyses of the conception, causes, and course of European involvement in the African Holocaust (MAAFA–from Swahili, meaning ‘great disaster’), some here (particularly those who have not bothered to read the previous posts first) persist in changing the subject back to ‘slavery’–a linguistic generalization so unfocused, mundane, and so unspecific that it ALLOWS one to babble on about ‘a universal human potential’ (huh!? Whaaaa?) and about fictitious ‘universal potential’ ‘not being specific to any [RACE[??].
‘(b)lacks (who are these ‘blacks’??) and ‘whites’ (huh?) are the ‘same’ regarding ‘good’ and ‘evil’? Why are you babbling about ‘evil’ and about ‘universal potentials’ instead of actually saying something rooted in history or in some kind (any kind) of TEXTS that could contribute to the already fulsome discourse that has gone on at this very blog?
There is so much irrationality, so many myths and lies embedded in your comment that one hardly knows where to begin spanking your misconceptions. Perhaps we’ll begin at the top and work our way down.
The subject in response to Abagond’s original post, that has been quite intelligently discussed on this blog for some years now is NOT ‘slavery’ but The Corporate Trans Atlantic Triangle Slave Trade (‘The Trade’ as scholars often shorten it–among those scholars, van Sertima, Rodney, Mazrui–whom I studies with briefly as a graduate student, to name just three).
The Trade was about economics, Sir, not about light headed quasi theocratic mythopoetic abstractions such as ‘evil’ or fictitious European inventions such as ‘race’ and the supra cultural presumably essential identities like ‘black’ people, that attended the birth of ‘race’. ‘Blackness (big ‘B’ not little ‘b’ by the way) is an identity that was created by taxonomically racist anthropologists and ethnologists ( “The Natural Varieties of Mankind,” by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, is the primary text that drove these delusions) as well as other European pseudo scientists such as phrenologists.
Their inventions functioned to change the subject from capitalism’s offenses to false proto genetics, and to deflect rational thought and critique; to mislead the gullible such as yourself into ignoring five hundred years of global capitalist over-development and primitive accumulation,and into ignoring paradigmatic shifts from monarchism to nascent corporate realism, and mass appropriation through the hundreds of years of colonialism that were enabled NOT by the historical universal of ‘slavery’ but by The Trade.
Even sources as innocuous as UNESCO are at least discursively advanced enough to post a completely lucid overview of the subject in comments such as this one:
“Ignorance or concealment of major historical events constitutes an obstacle to mutual understanding, reconciliation and cooperation among peoples. UNESCO has thus decided to break the silence surrounding the slave trade and slavery that have affected all continents and have caused the great upheavals that have shaped our modern societies.”
Frankly, if you have nothing to say about economics, the transformation of modernity founded upon the holocaust of The Trade, and the realities that brought not ‘universals’ but real flesh and blood, kidnapped men and women to these shores (MYANCESTORS), victims of the MAAFA, then you should just say nothing at all–you would cause less damage that way, Sir.
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@Rayfield………..Thank you!
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Love to you brother William. You are one of those lucid commentators I was referring to who are doing real critical analysis at this site. I hope I didn’t slip into channeling Keith Olbermann though, in my bombastic outrage. I always assume Abagond will reign me in if I go too far and he hasn’t hushed me this time!
Speaking of progress and reconciliation did you know Jimmy Carter turned 90 recently? Habitat for Humanity lives on.
Peace…
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I don’t deny that whites sold people into slavery for profit. Neither do I deny that part of my heritage is American Indian. Or that my daughter in-law in half black and half white . What irritates me is when someone ASSUMES I am guilty of something that I had nothing to do with and neither did they. Let’s not forget the atrocities our ancestors did, but let us not create more by demanding payment from innocent people.
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Arveca r Haberlein
Yet you have no problem assuming the issue is slavery? When speaking with most whites it is quite shocking that they bring up slavery to derail from real issues that they have plenty to do with. Issues that they are not innocent of commiting. Throwing out the black relative or friend does not excuse you or anyone from committing racist acts. Dylan Roof had black friends and was still racist. He still held on to many of the stereotypes and one liners that generally white Americans do.
Whites still hold a double standard line of thinking for blacks. Whites will pull put a crime stat, read it wrong, and still perpetuate the lie they concluded. Never fix it or admit to being wrong. American whites that write history books are still pushing lies in that. Refusing to tell the truth to both whites and black alike. Yet whites collectively are guilty because they refuse to ever speak up about the wrong. They sit back and co-sign it. Shall we go on with the things whites are guilty of today?
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“Dylan Roof had black friends and was still racist. He still held on to many of the stereotypes and one liners that generally white Americans do.”
This is just not quite the case in and of itself.
According to his own written testimony, it was only after the Trayvon Martin case that he became curious about things and discovered, much to his surprise and dismay, that it was Black people who are the most murderous people in this country. That when population ratio is taken into affect, Black Americans homicide rate is .0002564 while White Americans homicide rate is .0000458. And that Blacks murder Whites nearly four tymes the rate of verse vice-ah.
Now, Two things.
1) Trayvon Martin inspired him.
2) The Black kkk (o.k.a. naacp) inspired him because they had been making the asinine, incorrect assumption that the Confederate Battle Flag is inherently racist and hateful and so saying every single chance they could. Sooner or later, someone was going to take them at their word and act on it. When in fact, it is THEM who are racists. Thus proving the maxim of Jesus that one should not condemn one for the splinter in their eye when they themselves have a log in their own eye.
Thus the Black kkk has some of the blood of the poor souls of the Charleston 9 on their hands.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
Thank you for being such a prime example of the type of white racism that is plagues white Americans. The type that goes virtually unchecked.
Everything I said was true in and of itself no matter how twisted of a logic you try to apply.
Fact: he had black friends and continued to have them even after his revelation. So I repeat Dylan Roof had black friends and was still racist.
Fact: Blacks are not killing whites at a disproportionate rate to their population.
“1) Trayvon Martin inspired him.”—Trayvon Martin may have inspired him to search, but you will not go full on racist after a search if you were not already racist to some extent to being with.
“2) The Black kkk (o.k.a. naacp) inspired him because they had been making the asinine, incorrect assumption that the Confederate Battle Flag is inherently racist and hateful and so saying every single chance they could.”—False considering the argument about the flag did not even surface or get traction until after he murdered 9 people.
So your two things amounted to nothing. Which I am not surprised as much of what you say amounts to nothing.
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begin*
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@Sharinalr…..”Whites still hold a double standard line of thinking for blacks. Whites will pull put a crime stat, read it wrong, and still perpetuate the lie they concluded. Never fix it or admit to being wrong. American whites that write history books are still pushing lies in that. Refusing to tell the truth to both whites and black alike. Yet whites collectively are guilty because they refuse to ever speak up about the wrong. They sit back and co-sign it.”
I concur, well said Sharinalr….and 100% Correct, I’m white and I see and hear the racist white culture spew from the mouths of whites on a daily basis. Some do it and mean no harm and actually are completely unaware of what they do and some are just ignorant of anything to do with anything outside their white picket fence world and know as much about Black culture as they do Martian culture but that doesn’t stop them from making assumptions, accusations and conjecture. Then there are the Jimmy Shirleys who sit in their Moms basement, trolling from site to site, cherry picking from intelligent commentators post to fill the void meant for real human relations…
By the way Shirley once again you posted more lies trying to subvert new commentators. Here are the numbers of homicides by race according to the FBI….
2013
Whites murdered = 3,005
Race of offender = white: 2,509 black:409
Blacks murdered = 2,491
Race of offender = white:189 black: 2,245
But if you would like to get into which group is sicker than the other, here are some FACTS about child molesters you may be interested in…..
Characteristics of Offenders Who Violate and Assault Children
According to the Survey of Inmates of State Correctional Facilities by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, the following statistics have been recorded concerning the characteristics of offenders who violate and assault children.
* Those inmates who were convicted of committing violent acts against children were more like to have been white, a percentage of nearly 70%, than any other race.
* White inmates were nearly three times more likely to have victimized a child than black inmates.
* About one in every seven Hispanic convicts had been convicted for a crime against a child.
* Nearly two-thirds of convicted child molesters and/or offenders were or had been married.
* Child molesters and offenders were more likely to have grown up in a two parent home and were more likely to have been molested as a child.
* Approximately 22% of child offenders reported having been sexually abused as a child. (http://childprotection.lifetips.com//cat/63573/sex-offender-statistics/index.html)
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@Arveca r Haberlein
“I don’t deny that whites sold people into slavery for profit. Neither do I deny that part of my heritage is American Indian. Or that my daughter in-law in half black and half white . What irritates me is when someone ASSUMES I am guilty of something that I had nothing to do with and neither did they. Let’s not forget the atrocities our ancestors did, but let us not create more by demanding payment from innocent people.”
Give me examples of someone ASSUMING you are guilty of slavery’s past. I highly doubt that people randomly broach the subject with you, let alone blame you for the past. Also who is “demanding payment from innocent people?” Talk about some sweeping generalizations.
Why are you bringing up your Native American heritage? I have Native American blood too.. .. So? Does that or you having a biracial DIL absolve your ignorant views?
Give me a break.
Do you deny that the effects of slavery don’t exist today? Instead of making this topic about you.. cause I think the white guilt excuse has been done to death… what are you personally doing to take a stand against White Supremacy?
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@bygodsloveandgrace…..”Do you deny that the effects of slavery don’t exist today? Instead of making this topic about you.. ”
Denial and center of the Universe disease….willful ignorant whites best attributes. These same whites don’t want to see the numbers, the statistics or hear about actual history. They don’t want to spend an afternoon listening to actual Black People and their experiences as Americans or the stories their Grandparents handed down about Jim Crow laws or their families slavery stories…if by chance someone slips a website or meme in front of them they just deny what they are seeing…”Oh you believe that liberal crap”, I’ve even had a few idiots deny the person who experienced racism…How do you respond to someone who, when presented with the truth, denies it when it doesn’t fit his/her nice white picket fence conservative narrative? Where Blacks are just whiners and whites gave them a better life here in the good ole U.S.A.! There answer to the Truth is “Bullshit!”
Well said Girlfriend, “Snap”.
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*affects
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@ William the Conquerer
Thank you!
My feelings exactly.. The amount of deflection is annoying. This is exactly why things don’t change.
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Wow this article is harsh and rasist as shit! White people do admit slavery happened, we do like to point out though that we did not start it. Just took it way too far, which in turn we all realize it’s wrong in all senses and that’s why we do not have it today. Besides that I am not a slave owner and you were never a slave so stop blaming us for everything, and be greatful, just like I am, that slave is not an issue (in the U.S)
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To William the Conqueror:
But if you would like to get into which group is sicker than the other, here are some FACTS about child molesters you may be interested in…..,
First child molestation is a significantly under reported crime so any government statistics is at best a guess, but let’s look at the actual data from the US government:
Here is the link that shows incarceration by Race and Ethnicity:
Look at Table Two – on Page 8
Click to access rsorp94.pdf
The results, % of total child molesters by race/ethnicity:
Non-Hispanic Total (Blacks/Whites/Asians…) = 76.5%
Hispanics 23.5%
Non-Hispanic Whites 59.36% = (76.5% x 77.6%)
Non- Hispanic Blacks 15.83% = (76.5% x 20.7%)
Other 1.7%
Now compare to their presence of each in the general population at the time of publication, for likelihood of being a child molester as opposed to an average American:
Hispanics +161%
Blacks +31%
Non- Hispanic Whites – 21.5%
Other -54%
(Other according to the DOJ is generally Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American)
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@Arveca r Haberlein
The US Government as well as the governments of UK, Spain, Portugal, France, Netherlands, South Africa, etc. sanctioned slavery, and when they ended slavery, they sanctioned discrimination and apartheid up until the 1990s. These governments should pay reparations, not innocent people, and here’s why: blacks were not afforded the same rights to protect their property and wealth in the judicial system that whites were afforded. So many blacks lost their property/wealth unjustly and without proper recourse, which affects their descendants who live today. There are also lots of other residual effects of slavery, discrimination and apartheid that psychologically and financially affect blacks today, and no European colonial government has corrected the wrongs that they played a part in doing.
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Laughing a Jimmy L. Shirley Jr. “rocket surgery” really?
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@William
I agree. These are the same men race war plotting and screaming about how whites can only be pushed so far.
@bygodsloveandgrace
Well said.
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Uncle Milton
How can you counter Williams 2013 stats with 1994 stats?
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@Uncle Milton…..*
“Those inmates who were convicted of committing violent acts against children were more like to have been white, a percentage of nearly 70%, than any other race.”
See the word CONVICTED Uncle Milton, that is not a guess that is a FACT!
Second of all it is clearly obvious why more white people will be targeted than Black people by criminals or desperate people, WHITE PEOPLE HAVE ALL THE MONEY. No one is going to rob a poor person or go into impoverished neighborhoods to do their crimes. Whites have had a 350 year head start; buying the land, opening up business’s, creating empires and amassing every commodity, every position and every political spot. They subverted every system possible and kept people of color oppressed until 1965. By 1965 there was nothing left to succeed at, whites had accrued everything. So after enslaving, murdering 8 million, oppressing and degrading for 350 years, whites want to know why Black people commit crimes against whites…Are you really that stupid?
Blacks have only had the law on their side for 50 years. Well the law may say all men are created equal but we know that when whites own and control 99% of everything, the law doesn’t mean a hill of beans.
Please don’t expose us all to your ignorance and point out a few exceptions to the rule, the people here are just too intelligent for that playground crap!
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Shalinar:
2) The Black kkk (o.k.a. naacp) inspired him because they had been making the asinine, incorrect assumption that the Confederate Battle Flag is inherently racist and hateful and so saying every single chance they could.”—False considering the argument about the flag did not even surface or get traction until after he murdered 9 people.
How so completely ignorant of even recent history are you people?
The tanned klan declared war on us way back in 1991, with a written resolution. 1991!!!!
And ever since, they have told everyone who will listen, such as the brainwashed W.T.C. that they are the ones who get to define what the noble Confederate Battle Flag represents. Well they are wrong. They do NOT get to define who I am, any more than the olde White kkk gets to define what Black people are.
WTC:
Point of the numbers of homicides by race is this. According to the latest census figures, Blacks are about 39,000,000 in the US whilst Whites are about 249,000,000. And from the FBI, the homicide stats show in 2013, Blacks committed 2695 homicides for a per capita murder rate of .0000691. Whites committed 2755 homicides for a per capita murder rate of .0000011. Numbers achieved by dividing the number of homicides by the population numbers, which by the way have been rounded.
So, y’all claim this kind of mass slaughter by you people is a direct result of the rippling affects of slavery? Y’all did not have these proportions of homicides in the many years after 1865. Y’all began doing this after the civil rights legislations of the mid 60’s. Seems to me then that this is a result of liberty. Showing y’all can not live with liberty here in the US. Seems like it just doesnt work for y’all.
What then is the answer for taming wild savages just a couple of hundred years removed from the jungle?
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Hey Jimmy, Y’all for real?
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@Jimmy or Uncle Milton, which ever he goes by….
http://www.sott.net/article/273517-Study-US-regime-has-killed-20-30-million-people-since-World-War-Two
The white man is responsible for over 20 million deaths since WWll and that is the low number estimated. White men have killed over 16 million Native Americans including the Christopher Columbus massacres. The American white coward is responsible for 14 million Native American slaughters, 8 million African slave slaughters, 2,400 DOCUMENTED lynchings (Those numbers are much much higher actually), hate crimes for 100 years with impunity, cops killing 5,000 black men every 10 years on average….But you go ahead Jimmy and point out that 219 more whites were killed by Blacks than Blacks were killed by whites…Your good at picking out the one little minuet detail among the enormous disparity in the white mans inherently EVIL DOINGS! You keep trying to put lipstick on that pig because in the end you will still have an ugly white pig! Only a racist can believe his own bullshit!
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To William the conqueror:
See the word CONVICTED Uncle Milton, that is not a guess that is a FACT
And the data I posted, if you had bothered to follow the link, was also for people who had been convicted.
The data you cited came from data from a US DOJ report written in 1996 using prison data from 1991.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/CVVOATV.PDF
As for your quote:
Those inmates who were convicted of committing violent acts against children were more like to have been white, a percentage of nearly 70%, than any other race
Highlights page IV from the above linked report:
“While nearly 70% of those serving time for violent crimes against children
were white, whites accounted for 40% of those imprisoned for violent crimes
against adults.”
And
From page 5 of the report I linked above:
“By contrast, nearly 70% of child victimizers were white, while just over 25% of child victimizers were black.”
However, at the time of the data (the report was written in 1996 but drew upon 1991 prison data) Non-Hispanic whites were 75.6% of the population so whites were under represented as child victimizers and blacks were over represented. Note that the 1991 data did not segregate out Hispanic offenders. The later report I previously linked did, which lowered the rate for Non-Hispanic whites even more.
Although the data I posted shows that non-hispanic whites molest children at a lower rate than blacks or Latinos, my point was that since it is a heavily under reported crime we should not necessarily believe that inmate data reflects the percentage of child molesters by race/ethnicity in this country, hence my comment about a guess. But the data I posted was for convictions, eg facts as you stated.
So if you want to cite data, you might want to check, verify, and understand the source and material.
Please don’t expose us all to your ignorance and point out a few exceptions to the rule, the people here are just too intelligent for that playground crap!
So if I post something that you seem to disagree with and back it up with links, then I am ignorant..? Even though you apparently did not fully read or comprehend my post..?
Second of all it is clearly obvious why more white people will be targeted than Black people by criminals or desperate people..
Strawman fallacy, since I didn’t mention anything on this thread about black on white crime William.
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@Uncle Milton….
Actually none of these statistics can be considered accurate any longer after the extensive FBI investigations into our Law Enforcement nation wide. The FBI found that there were 1,589 law enforcement agencies that were horribly racist. 1,589 of these systems were WORSE than Ferguson. Black men were “targeted” at a rate of 8 to 1 for no other reason that they were Black or in a white neighborhood, Black suspects were searched at a rate of 10 to 1 and whites let go with cocaine in their pockets/guns/child porn, Blacks were convicted more often, spent more time in jail for the same crime “with the same records”, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc…So you and I can post numbers all day long but the system is tilted, the system is owned by whites, ruled by whites, judged by whites and has been for hundreds of years…
Lets not forget about the white man privatizing the prison system and convicting men based on profit, “Oh here is a great idea”, we already know that the white man will shoot his Mom in the back for a dollar and now you want to give the white man money for every Black man he puts in jail….Can I get a “Hello Satan”.
As far as white child molesters, the bottom line is that 70% of convicted inmates from the last known study were white…bottom line they weren’t Black.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
“How so completely ignorant of even recent history are you people?
The tanned klan declared war on us way back in 1991, with a written resolution. 1991!!!!”—I am not YOU people. I am a person and apparently I know more about all of this than you do. Calling me ignorant won’t do anything to shy away from the fact that you know Jack shyte.
If you want to get real technical here Roof carried other racist flags, so should we also blame NAACP for not putting forth enough effort to showcase the history of those flags as well.
“get to define what the noble Confederate Battle Flag represents. Well they are wrong. They do NOT get to define who I am, any more than the olde White kkk gets to define what Black people are.”—-They did not need to tell anyone what the flag stood for as all they had to do was watch as the KKK carried the flag everywhere. This is not the work of the NAACP, but the work of the Klan who happily changed the meaning of the flag itself, if it ever meant anything else. Yet the KKK has already defined what black people are and you happily fall in line with their definitions, then try to claim justice for all when convenient. Just like the rest of the hefty sum of white Americans.
So I repeat myself again. False considering the argument about the flag did not even surface or get traction until after he murdered 9 people.
Interesting you mention stats during a time period were whites were still happily arresting blacks for anything. You should check out those shows were blacks are finally getting released because they are innocent and DNA evidence is proving so. Or late witnesses get a conscience. or….I could go on but what the heck. You made it clear you are racist.
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@William
Jimmy and Uncle Milton are not the same. I am guessing Uncle Milton just seeks to correct information as well Jimmy is just a racist prick.
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@sharinalr: And ignorant racist prick at that with his atrocious spelling and wrongheaded information.
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Thank you Sharinalr….
Uncle Milton I apologize for lumping you with Jimmy Shirley.
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I honestly wish slavery never ever happened and the idiot who thought of bringing slaves over here should be dug up and pissed on because it ruined a lot of lives and it still ruins our lives today. I wonder how things would have been if it never occurred? We would all be much happier …nah mean!?
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You are correct, Rocky.
Happi-ER!! Yes!!
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Mary Burrell,
Show me my atrocious spelling!!
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Rocky and Jimmy
You both are slow beyond reason. You must have been short bus riders (sorry short bus for the insult). If by slaves you mean blacks then blacks were here prior to European arrival. Not bring slaves does not mean they or any other group of people would not have been here. If you wanted happiness maybe you should have avoided killing and enslaving those who actually owned this land.
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Girl, please.
Like you people never waged wars of conquest on your own African continent, thus dispossessing native peoples from their ancestral lands.
Take that tree out of your own eye afore judging us of the splinter in ours.
Minion!!
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Oh Please!!
The only reason we dont know more about the military history of tribal Africa is because y’all never developed a written language in order to keep historical accounts. Word of mouth told down along generational lines, as y’all are so ridiculously proud of, is totally susceptible to embellishment, so as then to become unsustainable and lacking in integrity.
After all, people say you cant believe everything you read. And tales told are more believable?
So, the only reason you DO know about us IS because we were intelligent enough to develop writing, as Rome did, the Greeks, and other European countries, as well as the Middle East. Too bad Egyptian hieroglyphics did not filet down Southward, eh?
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@Jimmy
Girl do get a hobby. Try education on deflection, strawman 101, and history.
I just find it funny that you have the nerve to complain about people treating you bad for taking their land, enslaving them, and reminding you of it.
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@Jimmy
Girl I just pulled out several seats for you. Please take them all.
It was discovered some time ago that Africans did have a written language. In efforts to study the Kingodm of Kush much was discovered on them during the limited time that the tide was low to discover much of their artifacts. This is only one notable kingdom but I have read of others. I found that doing a google search and not word of mouth.
Also Africans migrated like everyone else so this idea that they were just down south is a fleeting one. National Geographic did a nice limited piece on Black Pharaohs. I give it credit as they finally admit that many of the Egyptian artifacts were destroyed due to their black features.
Africa has many mysteries and more people are looking to discover them and as that happens there is less fantasy for whites like you to live in. I hope your fall is an especially painful one.
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@jIMMY…You are so feeble minded, it is just too easy proving you wrong or debunking your kindergarten responses. Jimmy, what is a written account on paper derived from? MEMORY you despot! Tell me how a person writing the story is any more less capable of embellishment than one who has practiced story telling for 10,000 years? The white mans history books are loaded with embellishments, lies and omittance of any wrong doing that places them in a dark light. Recent test scores, ongoing discoveries during archaeological digs (Viking coins found in New England, cocaine and tobacco found in Egyptian mummies, etc) are proving our history books MOSTLY INNACCURATE. Our history foundation has only been in existence for just over 100 years, do you know how most of our history was written prior to the National Foundation of American History was established?….MEMORY! Bits and pieces of letters, stories from elderly, written carvings, eclectic materials and so on were used to weave a fabricated story here and there using some half truths and mostly fictionalized accounts by the author but mostly written by embellishing historians, white men, looking to make America shine bright among all other nations, AS USUAL. Below is an article about the negligence of our history books and the lies and embellishments of our historians who subverted FACTS to once again give a false sense of superiority over other nations or people, who really didn’t give a shit about anything America had to say or do. Only the huge insecurities of the white man keeps him running around like an idiot, trying to prove to the world how great and powerful he is and now world is finally laughing at him! Knowing how week he really is.
It has become commonplace to deplore U.S. students’ dismal performance in math and science when their test results are compared to those of students in other advanced and not-so-advanced industrial countries.
But, it turns out, according to the Nation’s Report Card, or National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federally administered test results released in June 2011, the area in which U.S. students perform most poorly is actually U.S. history. According to the results, only 12 percent of high school students were proficient in U.S. history. And only a scant 2 percent could identify the social problem addressed in Brown v. Board of Education, even though the answer should have been obvious from the wording of the question itself.
Historically-challenged students turn into historically-challenged adults who make for unqualified citizens. Our republican system requires a literate, educated, and knowledgeable public. No wonder Santayana’s famous comment that “he who forgets the past is condemned to repeat it” has been borne out repeatedly over the past century and a quarter of U.S. history.
In terms of history education, we face two basic problems. First, as the Nation’s Report Card indicates, students know very little history. Second, much of what they do learn is extremely partial or flat out wrong. Take, for example, the discussion of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in one popular high school text–The American Past by Joseph Conlin–which happens to be used in Oliver’s daughter’s highly rated Los Angeles private high school.
“In the few brief paragraphs devoted to the atomic bombings, which the Newseum’s 1999 panel of experts declared the most important news event of the 20th century, Conlin manages to twice repeat the falsehood that the bombs were used to avoid one million U.S. casualties in an invasion, that Japanese fanaticism was “impossible to overstate,” and that the bombs ended the war.
Such complete ignorance or willful dismissal of contemporary scholarship on the topic is unconscionable. Not only does Conlin fail to mention the ongoing debate over the projected casualty estimates, he ignores State and War Department studies contending that the Japanese were not fanatics but would indeed fight fiercely to protect the emperor, that Japanese leaders recognized that victory was impossible and were trying to secure terms that would allow them to avoid surrendering unconditionally, that the United States had broken the Japanese codes and American leaders were fully aware of Japan’s desperate plight — Truman referred to the July 18 telegram as “the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace”, that the U.S. knew that the imminent Soviet invasion would finish the Japanese off once and for all — “fini Japs” when Stalin comes in Truman wrote, that the impact of the atomic bombs was less than decisive because the U.S. had been wiping out entire cities for months with its firebomb raids, and that it was the dreaded Soviet invasion, which proved the bankruptcy of both Japan’s diplomatic and military strategy, rather than the atomic bombs, that forced Japan’s surrender.
Conlin neglects to mention that six of the seven five star U.S. officers who earned their fifth star during the war are on record as saying the atomic bombings were either morally reprehensible — as did Truman’s Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy — or militarily unnecessary. General Douglas MacArthur told former president Herbert Hoover that the Japanese would have happily surrendered in May, almost three months earlier, if the U.S. had told them they could keep the emperor. While that might be an overstatement, wouldn’t it be something of interest to high school students?
People ignorant of the real facts of history fill the vacuum with either a fancifully corrupt view or a mythic one. In the United States that usually takes the form of a comforting fairy tale of American exceptionalism — the notion that unique among nations, the U.S. is motivated by altruistic benevolence, generosity, and the desire to spread freedom and democracy. Woodrow Wilson, a true believer in America’s mission, declared after Versailles, “At last the world knows America as the savior of the world!”
Neither World War I, which Wilson lied the country into, or the Treaty of Versailles is looked back upon very favorably today. Other presidents, most notably Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have voiced similar sentiments, which they no doubt also sincerely believed. We’re still paying the price for the debacles they lied us into.
As the great independent journalist I. F. Stone wisely pointed out: “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.” And it becomes even more dangerous if an ignorant public, indoctrinated with the same cockamamie ideas as the nation’s leaders, doesn’t have the good sense to question what they are spewing.”
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-stone/the-problem-with-america-history_b_2059593.html)
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@ Sharinalr
Sister, I have been reading your last ten or so posts and starting to post supporting comments and then stopping, and saying to myself, ‘naaaahhhh, she don’t need any support!’
Your comments have been burnin! You have been spanking and slapping away all foolish and false comers, knocking their asses out. Some swinging cadenzas, some fine solos and overtures, some soaring arias (if you don’t mind my mixing the metaphors of boxing and song!)
You are Black hot! Keep on knocking them out.
Ray
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@Rayfield
Thanks, but I always appreciate added information whether I need help or not.
It is key that the truth of history be told and these lies that whites like Jimmy kees passing off need to be stumped out.
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You people are wacked. (sic)
Ancient ruins abound the world. Egypt. Cambodia. China.
North/South America. Where are the massive ruins of sub-Sahara Africa? Writing persisted and kept on keeping on from Ancient Rome, Egypt, China, Japan, India unto this very day.
If Nubia, Kush, Aksurn, etc. indeed were these fabled fonts of higher learning, back in some ancient tyme long ago, what happened? Where are all these writings, where are their ruins? Cant blame the jungle. Those excuses cover the Mayans, the Incas, Southeast Asia and those ruins have been found.
So what sort of imaginations shall you believers in fables come up with next, eh?
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@Jimmy
I know it is hard for your kind to come face to face with your white lies, but at some point you have to or not. Comic relief is always fun.
“Where are the massive ruins of sub-Sahara Africa? “—They are still there (http://www.worldheritagesite.org/categories/category28.html). I don’t imagine you will ever do the research, but many archaeological finds have confirmed everything I said and more. In fact it is noted that the Kingdom of the Kush ruled over Egypt for a time. Egypt has black roots or as you racist call it Sub-Saharan.
“If Nubia, Kush, Aksurn, etc. indeed were these fabled fonts of higher learning, back in some ancient tyme long ago, what happened?”—Nothing. Though we could say white and/or Muslim invaders destroyed them. Which would not be far from the truth I might add. But because you brought in the fantasy I will stick with as much of the truth as possible. The writings are likely in museums. Kiwi even provided a link for one, but there are more. Then again like all language it simply evolved into that of the conquers.
“So what sort of imaginations shall you believers in fables come up with next, eh?”—The thing is we have provided sources and you have been rambling on about how not true it is. So to correct your question….what sort of imaginations shall YOU believer in fables come up with next?
FYI Remember when you asked Mary about your atrocious spelling? Check out tyme and time in sentence.
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Lets not forget my bothers and sisters, recent scientific discoveries have proven, unequivocally, that all mankind derived from the African continent and all human beings were at one time BLACK!
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@William
People like Jimmy can not be honest. In order for his type to be honest they will have to admit to years of lies and thievery. The psychological affects alone can be damaging as he like many others were told those same lies repeatedly.
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correction effects*
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So what sort of imaginations shall you believers in fables come up with next, eh?
Let’s see….Y’all is smart Jimmy!
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When white Americans bring up the history of African slavery in an effort to not address the racial disparities and cruelties that are continued today, in a country whose constitution and enduring mythologies point to “liberty and justice for all”, it is derailing. It does not matter if Africans did it. Corporations that exist today got much of their early funds from slavery. It is a way to not address the serious impact of slavery on American blacks. “Africans engaged in slavery” Yeah, so? We live in a country with an ideology that alleges equality, merit based advancement and the American dream. So let’s address the gap between the reality and the myth, regardless of the slavery that existed in Europe and Africa. Europeans were able to free themselves of slavery because of the presence of Americanized Africans- who are now known as African Americans. So most every European ethnic group of people have been able to bounce back from New World slavery because of the presence of blacks. European elite in the Americas were able to play the skin shade card and destroy any unity between black indentured servants and white ones. So, rather than focus on African, most blacks want to address the gaping injustice as other groups benefitted from their unique position at the bottom of the caste ladder in a country that prides itself on being and purports itself to be a land of inherent fairness and justice. That’s the issue and that ‘s why whites bringing up African slavery feels like deflection, rather than an attempt to address and perhaps remedy the ill effects of New World Slavery on black North and South Americans.
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@Angela
I actually put African sold their own in the same category as Irish were slaves too. It minimizes the effects of slavery.
“Europeans were able to free themselves of slavery because of the presence of Americanized Africans- who are now known as African Americans”—I don’t agree. Europeans were able to free themselves because most of them were not slaves to begin with. They were indentured servants. They sold themselves to get passage to the Americas. Another factor is they were white. This gave them great advantages that were not available to blacks who were actually slaves.
“European elite in the Americas were able to play the skin shade card and destroy any unity between black indentured servants and white ones.”—I use to believe that but then I recently did some extensive research on the Irish. A group that used their white skin to advance by stepping on the backs of blacks. The destruction between black and white slaves really came about because black slaves would be punished when the white slaves would rebel. There was a serious lack of equality in treatment.
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I will say this to all y’all!!
That was then, this is now.
So what if y’alls ancestors were inslaved.
SO!??
Some of y’alls immediate ancestors pulled up their big girl panties and so should you people.
Some of the whiniest ungrateful thugs ever.
Like the other guy and I lamented – wish y’all had never been brought here in the first place.
Could I go back and change the past, this I would change.
Keep you people in Africa where y’all belong.
We ALL would be better off.
Us!
Y’all!
So, pull up y’alls big girl panties or shut your hiny holes!!
Better to be here than dodging lions and black mamba’s.
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@Jimmy.. You’ve lost and you don’t even know it.. Let that sink in… You continue to be you though.. It’s very entertaining…
@sharinalr, William the Conquerer Bravo!
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I am so glad that my ancestors were actually Black, makes me feel much less guilty belonging to an ethnic group that has spent the last 1,000 years destroying the planet, destroying 100,000 year old cultures, claiming to worship Christ yet twisting his very words so that they fit their Satanic narrative, dropping 500 pound bombs on tiny babies asleep in their cribs, shooting hot liquid fire into grass huts onto 6 and 7 year old children eating a meager supper with their parents, wiping out millions of Native peoples who invited them into their homes, consuming every single finite resource like a giant mammoth tape worm the size of Jupiter so that they can accumulate paper money or numbers on a computer screen, dumping billions of toxins into the air as cancer rates rise in poor and middle class children, making billions on the sick and dying, dropping nuclear bombs on innocent civilians and then telling other countries that they can’t have nuclear weapons and if they try to get some they will invade them and kill your children with ballistic ordinances, etc, etc, etc, etc….The white man is the most evil, sadistic, Earth destroying, culture destroying, inhuman, toxic form of life on this planet and it is he who will be the demise of us all….Thank God I was once Black.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
See what your 3rd grade education got you. Blacks would have been here already. Artifacts and remains of black civilization found in the Americas 170 years prior to old Columbus. So I say this with much joy wish y’all Europeans had never been brought here in the first place.
Only way to avoid us would be to discover America before us, because not all of us came here as slaves.
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You people have won nothing, and neither have I lost anything.
I have read most things y’all wrote and your powers of suasion are moot and mute, except amongst your own kind.
And “speaking” of 3rd grade educations, what I read here indicates y’all are no different. Your Ray Waller is obviously enthralled with his own thesaurus-like verbiage, because of the way he tosses out so very many uncommon words. He does not communicate, he exalts himself.
Do not make the expected-from-you-people mistake of thinking I do not apprehend his words, I do. Still, I am unimpressed, not that he cares. Not that you people care, either. And, for the record, I only graduated high school, back in the days when teachers actually taught, as opposed to this day when most teachers, and college professors, indoctrinate.
And, for the record, you bunch of self-righteous, gliberal hypocrites, I have long known about other peoples landing here. Even the Chinese have made a claim, supposedly landing here more than 2,000 year distant. Not to mention the fact of a different kind and appearance betwixt the American Indians of those east of the Mississippi River and the Plains Indians.
Vikings, Negroes, etc. Whatever. The simple fact remains that as a result of Columbus, this place was forever changed.
AND, WTC, for that matter, all those humans who lived here afore us also resulted in the extinctions of many animals, not the least of which were the mastodons and mammoths.
ALSO, you believe the early humanoids on the A Frican continent were Negroid in skin colour? You dont know because you werent there and there are no samples to show one way or another.
AND, were it not for the White race, we would still be living in the stone age and all of us few in number humans would be subject to being eaten daily by the wild beasts of the jungles and fields. Most likely, we would all die by age thirty and be subject to all our own superstitious beliefs, not even connecting sex with child birth.
Were it left up to the Negro race, A Fricans, that is how it would still be. So, go ahead and think stupid foolishness. You want to be Black? Next best thing to atone for your supreme anguish for being White, move to sub-Sahara A Frica and volunteer to be their slave for the rest of your days.
But I dont expect you to do that at all, for you are all talk and no action.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
I was not going to say anything, but you lost a long time ago. You get into debates, provide no sources, then when you are proven wrong you throw a fit. That is what losers do.
“I have long known about other peoples landing here.”—I doubt it. I think at this point you are just looking to make yourself look smarter than what you are. You likely looked most of this stuff up after getting your behind handed to you.
“The simple fact remains that as a result of Columbus, this place was forever changed.”—If by changed you mean for the worse.
“ALSO, you believe the early humanoids on the A Frican continent were Negroid in skin colour? You dont know because you werent there and there are no samples to show one way or another.”—Actually there are. It was discovered that the gene, as they put it, that made dark skin color was present in the remains. The research I read seems pretty old too, so not sure how you missed it. lol
“AND, were it not for the White race, we would still be living in the stone age and all of us few in number humans would be subject to being eaten daily by the wild beasts of the jungles and fields.”—Considering whites stole a great deal of inventions from others I doubt it. You seem to not realize how much was actually present prior to whites (not surprise here).
“But I dont expect you to do that at all, for you are all talk and no action.”—The biggest mistake by individuals such as yourself is believing that every commenter is from America. It is also funny to watch the melt down though. ROFL.
AS to your comment about Ray, you can barely spell let alone understand what he is saying. Even without Ray it is obvious that you lack mentally.
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ALSO, you believe the early humanoids on the A Frican continent were Negroid in skin colour? You dont know because you werent there and there are no samples to show one way or another.
I beg to differ Jimmy. Google Edgar Rice Burroughs and read his highly regarded anthropological tome which deals succinctly about the origins of the human race. Y’ll will be enlightened and pleasantly surprised! Jimmy, I was there as I am the mighty Cthulhu! Bow down minions!
Keep you people in Africa where y’all belong.
Does that mean you will stay in Europe genius?
So, pull up y’alls big girl panties or shut your hiny holes!!
What are ‘hiny holes’ a new brand of stockings?
Jimmy, can you stop using the term Y’ll? I am beginning to say it on a daily basis and people look at me strangely. They think I am channeling ‘Granny’ from the Beverley Hillbillies. Please Jimmy, just stop.
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It’s not the color white or black that drives humans to do things. It’s the color green and their laziness… I personally don’t believe we should forget slavery. I do however believe it should not be a constant argumentative point…. How can YOU tell how or what someone feels or thinks towards life, other humans, or anything for that matter? Imagine, I wrote this article and I lumped everything negative about your nationality, race and/or religion how would you feel?… Finally, I wonder what life would be like if it was the other way around. (If everyone switched colors) would you still have the same views? Would I still have the same views… As who I am as a human currently, I believe we should attempt to view any situation as if I walked in that persons shoes and they in mine.
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It’s an absolute truth that people in Africa sold their own people to the Europeans. Is it so hard to believe, or is it convenient and easier to comprehend that your own ancestry was part of it. At least in Asian culture, we admit our mistakes.
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^ Pfft. Please be quiet. There is something in Asian culture, generally speaking, that is more concerned with saving face than admitting mistakes. Get off your high horse, Mr. Asian guy, that is, if you’re really Asian.
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I really hope Siew H Zhang is NOT Chinese saying that load of rubbish, in regards to “admitting one’s own mistakes”. Because that country is notorious for covering up their mistakes. Even modern day ones, such as falsely inflating your GDP to pretend that your country is growing exponentially.
If you’re Korean, it’s even worse. As all one has to do is point to North Korea frequently hiding its violations.
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@ Siew H Zhang
Did you even read the post? And what is “Asian culture”? Most of mankind lives in Asia. What in the world can “Asian culture” possibly mean? It is as meaningless and misleading as saying “Africans sold their own.”
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Ok comrade Siew H Zhang, you know the drill, it’s time for a self criticism and ideological rectification session. You’ve fallen under the baneful sway of petty bourgeois ideology, and grave nationalist deviation.
http://media.photobucket.com/user/prestonjjrtr/media/Smileys/LaughingLOL.gif.html?filters%5Bterm%5D=laugh%20laughing%20pointing%20point%20ha%20ha%20lol%20joke%20joking%20smileys%20smilies%20animated%20animation%20animations%20gif%20gifs&filters%5Bprimary%5D=images&filters%5Bsecondary%5D=videos&sort=1&o=2
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To Thaddeus;
I can see the effort you are expending here. And I understand it, but I also know that it is essentially a futile endeavor. It won’t matter how many facts or how much history supports your arguments. The perspective that all white society is responsible, and owes a dept, will never be shaken from the mindset of most here. There is too much emotional, political, social, and economic investment in that particular worldview for you to ever make even the slightest dent. 500 years from now there will still be those that claim they are owed, no matter what is done or said. If tomorrow, every single white person in America were to sign a declaration of responsibility, and pay Billions more in reparations, it still would not satisfy the majority. If you feel compelled to continue, by all means do so. Just limit your expectations. You’ll be a far happier person.
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@Mr.Obvious
You do realize that Thaddeus has not commented on this post since 2010 right?
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@MrObvious….
“…pay Billions more in reparations”
Tell me about it, us working class Americans have already paid Israel $120,000,000,000 billion dollars over the last 20 years and we didn’t do a damn thing to them, matter of fact we have carried those modern day Nazis on our backs for 50 years. But they are white and we all know that America, Britain and other European cultures treat white people as SUPERIORS and Black people as INFERIORS….these are just the FACTS!
To tell the truth I would rather my very hard earned tax dollars stay here in AMERICA and since we have treated Blacks worse than any other human being on the face of the Earth, except Native Americans but hey they got all that land in the dessert, I say at least they deserve it but to pay Israel all that money so they can do the same thing to the Palestinians as we do to Blacks is just a perpetuation of our WHITE SUPREMACIST SOCIETY. They use our hard earned tax dollars on Baby Buster Bombs, Nazi checkpoints, detention centers, bulldozers to knock down makeshift housing to make room for high rise condos for the wealthy Jews as they steal foot by foot of land left of the Palestinians.
$120,000,000,000 billion dollars could sure buy a lot of school books for impoverished areas where children are using books 30 years old and have to share because there are not enough to go around. It could help even the disparity in how much money is spent on a white student compared to a Black student. It could help thousands of men in jail with DNA evidence that can overturn their conviction get a new trial and attorney but they don’t have the money to fight such TYRANNY. Yes all that money going to more white people that don’t deserve it when it could be doing a lot of good in OUR COUNTRY with OUR COUNTRYMEN….but hey nobody said life was fair, especially if your Black in America.
By the way…your statement and Thaddeus is 100% wrong, it is perhaps one of the most ignorant, baseless, arm chair quarterback comments I have ever heard….Blacks on this site, in my life experiences or anywhere else, as a WHOLE, have absolutely no need for our evil dirty white capitalist money. After all it is Capitalism and the white mans worship of money that created this white supremacist country and is responsible for the brutality the Black man has suffered, they don’t want your blood soaked money or your reparations. You know what they want?…………….They want white people to leave them the FUCK ALONE! They want to go shopping and not be stared at or followed, they want equal pay for equal work, they want to be sentenced for a crime for the same amount of time as a white person, they want to trust the police not fear them, they want the same privileges any human being and every white dude has in this country and the world….Thats what they want, nothing more nothing less…..OH and maybe, just maybe a FUCKING APOLOGY!!!
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@JimmyShirley…..
“You people have won nothing, and neither have I lost anything.”
From one white boy to another, I have been whipping your ARS for a couple years now on almost every single point and comment. Was it because I am smarter than you, PROBABLY but no thats not it. Is it because I am wiser than you, Yes but thats not it either. Is it because I have more GRACE in my little finger than you do in your entire body, yes but thats not it either. I have whipped your ass every single time because I have the TRUTH on my side. I have won because I have MORALITY on my side. I have HUMAN DIGNITY on my side and COMPASSION for my fellow man, that is why it is so easy to get one up on you every single time…..since you don’t engage with me anymore because I have the inside track on white peoples TRUE BEHAVIOR, as I am white, I will call this a victory right now….I bid you good day.
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Asians don’t like blacks. Arabic don’t like blacks. Hispanics don’t like blacks. Whites don’t like blacks. Blacks don’t like blacks.
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Scott Golden don’t like blacks. Blacks don’t like Scott Golden.
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WTC,
Your smug, self-assured comments scream yankee gliberalism.
Moreover, you have NOT facts on your side, you have a gliberals bleeding heart opinion about things, which typically, y’all confuse with facts.. Same thing with morality.
Was it because I am smarter than you, [I have no real clue other than your postings here.] Is it because I am wiser than you, Yes [Again typical yankee smug gliberalism]. Is it because I have more GRACE in my little finger than you do in your entire body, [is it even possible for your body to contain your massively ginourmos ego?]. I have whipped your ass every single time because I have the TRUTH[? You mean opinion!] I have won because I have MORALITY [yankee morality?]I have HUMAN DIGNITY on my side [No you dont!! you would condemn every White man on this planet to eternal bondage to coloured people!] and COMPASSION for my fellow man,[OH please!! that is the biggest lie you yet have posted!!]
Here is a very precise assessment of the yankee written 153 years distant –
“OFFICIAL RECORDS: Series 2, vol 5, Part 1 (Prisoners of War) p. 389-390
GOLDSBOROUGH, N. C., March 24, 1863.
Major General J. G. FOSTER, Federal Army.
SIR: Two communications have been referred to me as the successor of General French. The prisoners from Swindell’s company and the Seventh North Carolina are true prisoners of war and if not paroled I will retaliate five-fold. In regard to your first communication touching the burning of Plymouth you seem to have forgotten two things. You forget, sir, that you are a Yankee and that Plymouth is a Southern town. It is no business of yours if we choose to burn one of our own towns. A meddling Yankee troubles himself about every body’s matters except his own and repents of everybody’s sins except his own. We are a different people. Should the Yankees burn a Union village in Connecticut or a cod-fish town in Massachusetts we would not meddle with them but rather bid them God-speed in their work of purifying the
atmosphere. Your second act of forgetfulness consists in your not
remembering that you are the most atrocious house-burner as yet unhung in
the wide universe. Let me remind you of the fact that you have made two
raids when you were weary of debauching in your negro harem and when you
knew that your forces outnumbered the Confederates five to one. Your whole
line of march has been marked by burning churches, school-houses, private
residences, barns, stables, gin-houses, negro cabins, fences in the row, &c.
Your men have plundered the country of all that it contained and wantonly
destroyed what they could not carry off. Before you started on your
freebooting expedition toward Tarborough you addressed your soldiers in the
town of Washington and told them that you were going to take them to a rich
country full of plunder. With such a hint to your thieves it is not
wonderful that your raid was characterized by rapine, pillage, arson and
murder. Learning last December that there was but a single weak brigade on
this line you tore yourself from the arms of sable beauty and moved out with
15,000 men on a grand marauding foray. You partially burned Kinston and
entirely destroyed the village of White Hall. The elegant mansion of the
planter and the hut of the poor farmer and fisherman were alike consumed by
your brigands. How matchless is the impudence which in view of this
wholesale arson can complain of the burning of Plymouth in the heat of
action! But there is another species of effrontery which New England itself
cannot excel. When you return to your harem from one of these
Union-restoring excursions you write to your Government the deliberate lie
that you have discovered a large and increasing Union sentiment in this
State. No one knows better than yourself that there is not a respectable man
in North Carolina in any condition of life who is not utterly and
irrevocably opposed to union with your hated and hateful people. A few
wealthy men have meanly and falsely professed Union sentiments to save their
property and a few ignorant fishermen have joined your ranks but to betray
you when the opportunity offers. No one knows better than yourself that our
people are true as steel and that our poorer classes have excelled the
wealthy in their devotion to our cause. You knowingly and willfully lie when
you speak of a Union sentiment in this brave, noble and patriotic State.
Wherever the trained and disciplined soldiers of North Carolina have met the
Federal forces you have been scattered as leaves before the hurricane.
In conclusion let me inform you that I will receive no more white flags from
you except the one which covers your surrender of the scene of your lust,
your debauchery and your crimes. No one dislikes New England more cordially
than I do, but there are thousands of honorable men even there who abhor
your career fully as much as I do.
Sincerely and truly, your enemy,
D. H. HILL,
Major-General, C. S. Army
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@Scott Golden
You did realize Arabic is a language right? It is okay I am used to stupid comments.
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
You should stroke your self esteem in places where people can not read what you have said. You don’t present truths. You present emotional opinions mixed in with confirmation bias.
Take a stadium of seats already. You are making the south look bad.
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@gro jo
No one likes Scott Golden. Scott Golden doesn’t like Scott Golden. That’s why he’s here
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@sharinalr
I really don’t think the South can look any worse at this point…
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The only people from the South that you people approve of are those bent over in supplication, a bunch of shucking and jiving uncle tom types, just like WTC is.
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@Death the Kid
It most certainly can. You have to take a trip here and stay a week and you will see exactly what I am talking about. Oh and remain in the small towns.
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@Jimmy Shirley…….”uncle tom types, just like WTC is”
Again coming from someone like you this is a HUGE compliment. Second of all I am proud of my white uncle tom label, anything that separates me from the conservative white supremacist elitist insecure white man is personal validation that i have made huge strides in stripping myself of my evil embedded white racist culture and this means more to me than you can ever know…Why thank you Jimmy!
P.S. Better to be an Uncle tom than one of Hitlers minions!
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@jimmy…
“OFFICIAL RECORDS: Series 2, vol 5, Part 1 (Prisoners of War) p. 389-390
GOLDSBOROUGH, N. C., March 24, 1863.
Major General J. G. FOSTER, Federal Army.
“SIR: Two communications have been referred to me as the successor of General French. The prisoners from Swindell’s company and the Seventh North Carolina are true prisoners of war and if not paroled I will retaliate five-fold. In regard to your first communication touching the burning of Plymouth you seem to have forgotten two things. You forget, sir, that you are a Yankee and that Plymouth is a Southern town. It is no business of yours if we choose to burn one of our own towns. A meddling Yankee troubles himself about every body’s matters except his own and repents of everybody’s sins except his own. We are a different people. Should the Yankees burn a Union village in Connecticut or a cod-fish town in Massachusetts we would not meddle with them but rather bid them God-speed in their work of purifying the
atmosphere.”
I want to leave you with a quote you might find as repulsive as a possessed man finds Holy water on his skin…
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)
This is exactly why you and I are different Jimmy, you choose to look away from evil, you choose to perpetuate evil, JUST LIKE THE SOUTHERN WHITES. Typical conservative behavior, “MEISM”, it is a Pagan behavior and Darwinism defined. It is exactly why I win every battle with you and why the NORTH won the war, They were fighting with MORALITY on their side and the South was fighting for EVIL. This had to confuse many Southerners and Rebel soldiers, they had to question if what they were fighting for was for worth dying for and this question they fought with eternally cost them their conviction and eventually it got them a huge BEAT DOWN. Blacks and whites fighting together to defeat EVIL, it was GLORIOUS and it would define what our country would be working towards from here on out, a melting pot for all people, all religions, all social classes and pure unadulterated FREEDOM and as each year passes this country gets better and better.
Yankees would not stand by and do nothing…..
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@sharinalr
I live in Texas and I go to school in Waller. I’ve passed by the same place Sandra Bland died twice(doesn’t get any less depressing :\)
If it can get worse, I hope I’m not around to see it. Compared to the people I’ve dealt with, @Shirley is pretty tame.
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@Death the Kid
Sorry I assumed you were not from down here, but Shirley is only tame because he is online.
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Why does it always have to be: White/Black, Republican/Democrat, North/South, Gay/Straight, Pro Life/Pro Choice, and so on?… Beating a dead horse doesn’t bring it back to life or change the fact that it is dead!
I am sorry I have not read every single post here, and do not know if this has been mentioned… But have read enough post to know what the topic is.
I have never seen the following brought up on this topic!
For both races: Black & White I would suggest talking to the Native American Indians living here (shouldn’t be that hard to find them, just walk down the street to the nearest “tee pee” and push button next to flap to ring bell) and ask them how they would feel about their people being kept as Slaves vs. being murdered!! (Wonder what they would say?)
If any one race has the right to say anything here it should be them!! It was their land long before the: White/Black slavery in the U.S.A.!
What would Blacks say when reminding Whites of how they were treated during slavery, the Whites were to remind the Blacks of the Indians? Would Blacks have something to say to that? It could have gone the same for them as it did for the Native American Indian!
What would Whites have to say if the Indians killed them while getting off the boats, or simply let them freeze and starve to death? That alone would have changed everything, and this would NOT be a topic in this forum!
The fact is: the past is in the past, and what is done cannot be undone by anyone here today! Arguing about the past is not moving forward, and means we will not change the future!
The Native Americans paid the ultimate price: Of life, and having tribes, and blood lines completely wiped off this planet for this land!
The truth is there is not one single person, or race on this planet that is better than the other! But think the Native American Indian is better than most as they showed more respect for this land than the ones who stole it from them!
We need to stop dividing everything into groups, and put meaning back into the letter “U” in U.S.A. and there is only one race that really matters = ” The Human Race “………..
Reminder to those that forgot:
It’s a free country; you are free to leave whenever you like, and keep in mind; there are no departures leaving earth at this time due to equipment failure!
It is pointless to put out the fire on the stove when the whole house is on fire!
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@ Human
That is terrible moral logic. If I stole your car and then used it to carry out a murder, you would still want your car back. You would still have a right to complain even though I did not murder anyone in your family. And, if to you or to the family of the murder victim, I said:
you would see that as arrogantly self-serving.
The reason I even had to write this post in the first place is because many White people have such terrible, self-serving moral logic. Just like you.
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^^^ It’s like a Mafia son living on the old compound, driving the Cadillacs, keeping the bank accounts, and then denying having any connection to the old Godfather who’s passed away.
“Hey, the past is the past!”
“And it wasn’t me PERSONALLY who stole or extorted your money!”
“Besides it was stolen a long time ago, so it doesn’t matter!”
“You should just be thankful that you weren’t killed! Being robbed is nothing!”
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@Human From Earth
You fail to realize that other groups were here prior to the Europeans. So those groups would be here, flourishing.
Whites brought in race. They categorized Native Americans as such. Blacks or African Americans as such. Asians as such. So how about you start you chant to the American government who happily holds that in place instead of talking bs on the internet.
Oh and considering my family built this country. I will leave when it is back in the hands of the indigenous people.
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abagond
@ Human
That is terrible moral logic. If I stole your car and then used it to carry out a murder, you would still want your car back. You would still have a right to complain even though I did not murder anyone in your family. And, if to you or to the family of the murder victim, I said:
“The fact is: the past is in the past, and what is done cannot be undone by anyone here today! Arguing about the past is not moving forward, and means we will not change the future!”
you would see that as arrogantly self-serving.
The reason I even had to write this post in the first place is because many White people have such terrible, self-serving moral logic. Just like you.
_____________________________________________________________
abagond,
You are the one that is missing the moral logic!
We as humans are all the same in human form as a species, no matter our skin color!
Humans are at fault here!
As long as humans continue to divide into groups and categories, and point fingers at one another and continue trying to control one another is immoral, and not logical!
It is our species that is responsible and guilty as a whole for all that has been done to one another!
For humans to think they have control of their existence on this planet or to hold any type of ownership of this planet is arrogant!
To suggest that I am arrogant, and self-serving, proves your ignorance!
To suggest you have a reason to post on a topic that you did not personally experience, but are pointing a finger at one race in blame; is self-serving!
It also suggest that you consider yourself to be better than others; by continuing to argue with anyone who shows you a point of view that is not of your own!
I would suggest you go back and read what I wrote! (minus: race, color, and religion, and read it as a human being)
I was just trying to point out that on this topic it is always Black vs. White / White vs. Black, and both races tend to overlook or consider the view of Native American Indians! I am curious to hear what they have to say to both whites & blacks on this topic!
I never said what I wrote was right or wrong!
I did not indicate I was of any color, creed, sex, or religion! Only human!
I would like to thank you for helping me by providing a perfect example!
We are of the same species, on the same planet!
World peace will only happen when humans remove all barriers, borders, boundaries, restrictions, beliefs, weapons, and everything that separates, and divides us into any group other than human!
______________________________________________________________
sharinalr
@Human From Earth
You fail to realize that other groups were here prior to the Europeans. So those groups would be here, flourishing.
Whites brought in race. They categorized Native Americans as such. Blacks or African Americans as such. Asians as such. So how about you start you chant to the American government who happily holds that in place instead of talking bs on the internet.
Oh and considering my family built this country. I will leave when it is back in the hands of the indigenous people.
——————————————————————————————————-
sharinair,
I am so glad to finally be able to meet a member of the family that is solely responsible for building this country! Sorry none of us pitch in and helped! We were taking a smoke break! Now that I have found who is responsible for the building of this land; I would like to point out a few design flaws when you have a moment!
You fail to realize that I only see one race, and one category= HUMAN!
Humans are responsible for all the labels, borders, boundaries, rules, and laws set in place on this planet today! They were not in place before humans!
Humans are responsible for the actions that have been taken towards other humans whether they took action or allowed it, and it continues to date!
I am sorry to those who did not understand what I was trying to say!
I thought I used plain simple English!
As far as the American government, that is not of this topic!
The topic was about how whites always use the “Africans sold Africans as slaves” as an excuse to justify slavery!
The point I was trying to make was that both blacks & whites are so consumed by proving who is right or wrong on this subject, and never reflect on the actions taken against the native American Indian or what if the Indians killed the whites when they arrived!? Would either race be on this land now!?
One race is responsible, “The Human Race”!!!
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@Human From Earth
Point out those designs flaws and when you are done please enlighten me on where I said solely versus your conclusion of such. 🙂
“I thought I used plain simple English!”—Anyone can write in English. Not everyone can write with clarity.
“As far as the American government, that is not of this topic!”—Actually it is and if you scroll through the comments you will see that it was brought up before.
“The topic was about how whites always use the “Africans sold Africans as slaves” as an excuse to justify slavery!”—I get that and if we are going to nitpick then you are off topic.
“never reflect on the actions taken against the native American Indian”—Even though blacks actually do more so than other groups, why should they? Whites did that too them not the Human race. Everybody does not have to take responsibility for that.
“Would either race be on this land now!”—Again blacks would. You need to do research. Artifacts were found on this land predating the arrival of Columbus. Europeans/whites were late to the party.
At any rate my Native America blood should afford me some say so or do I have to officially be part of a tribe?
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sharinair,
Considering that the “indigenous people” are “human”, leads me to ask when will you be leaving?
Think before you speak!
No one’s life has any more meaning or importance than another’s on this planet! Not even mine! Just to make it clear on how “self serving and arrogant” I am!
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sharinair,
By saying “Oh and considering my family built this country.” implies that your family did this alone! You never said “my family helped”!
To say “my Native America blood should afford me some say” makes you no better than the “White Europeans” you say “are responsible for the labels” not to mention I still have not said I am any other race other than “HUMAN”!
And again…. ” WE ARE ALL HUMAN ” COLOR DOES NOT CHANGE THIS!!
HUMANS LET HUMANS DO THIS TO OTHER HUMANS AS A SPECIES!!! AND WE ARE STILL LETTING IT GO ON FOR THE FACT THAT WE CAN’T SEE PAST SKIN COLOR & MANY OTHER THINGS!
And to continue this just proves my point! we have not changed a damn thing!
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@Human From Earth
“Considering that the “indigenous people” are “human”, leads me to ask when will you be leaving?”—Do you know how stupid you sound? I think not because you would not have pushed submit. Reread what I actual said and try again. Not once said indigenous people are not human.
“Think before you speak!”—I am not speaking I am typing, but should take your own advice.
“No one’s life has any more meaning or importance than another’s on this planet! Not even mine! Just to make it clear on how “self serving and arrogant” I am!”—Didn’t say it did and said nothing about you personally so do try again.
“mplies that your family did this alone! You never said “my family helped”!”—Actually it implies my family had a hand in building it but you are free to use any wayward tactic that makes you feel better.
“To say “my Native America blood should afford me some say” makes you no better than the “White Europeans” you say “are responsible for the labels” not to mention I still have not said I am any other race other than “HUMAN”!”—It makes me quite a bit better. I am acknowledging my heritage. Would you like me to pinpoint a tribe? I never said you were any other race or mentioned your race once. You must have hit your head when you fell off that soapbox.
“And to continue this just proves my point! we have not changed a damn thing!”—Your point. Nothing wrong with acknowledging differences.
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kiwi,
I am not saying one sole person of one color is responsible for slavery!
I am not trying to deflect either!
All colors of humans kill other colors as well as their own color!!!
Does this make it right or ok?
I don’t think so!
And why do black humans only have something to say when a non black human kills a black human?
Oh yeah, “Black Life Matters” !
But then maintain a code of silence when it is black human on black human!
(don’t try to tell me other wise! I have witnessed this many times!)
Where is “Black Life Matters” then?
How is that anymore justified?
Fact is all colors have done something to another color at some point!
Does not make it right either way!
There have been millions of discussions on this topic!
Has any of them undone what was done?
Why do we continue to let it continue?
Do you really think if one color group of humans stop means all colors of humans will stop too?
Again, I am human of no, race or color!
But it has been assumed I am: White, Black, and American Indian!!!
All this talk, and the horse is still dead!!!!
What I have been saying the whole time!
Seeing how I have better things to do than beating a dead horse, and expecting it to come back to life!
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@Human From Earth
ACtually blacks speak out a lot when a black person is killed by a black person. Perhaps one day you might use google to check out all those black rallies against gang violence. This one might help. http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2015/08/newark_occupy_the_city_rally_ras_baraka.html
I have also found some from years prior.
“Where is “Black Life Matters” then?”–BLM’s purpose is police brutality. I don’t expect them to speak on black on black crime when we have several groups that do that.
“But it has been assumed I am: White, Black, and American Indian!!!”—Quote where someone assumed what you are? You seem to keep dancing on this waiting for us to ask or assume.
“Seeing how I have better things to do than beating a dead horse, and expecting it to come back to life!”—From your post it can be assumed you don’t you are beating a dead horse now, while telling everyone to stop beating one.
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Human From Earth…..There is not enough time in my day right now to pick apart your post and point out the errors in your thinking and why it is not possible to leave a past behind that is just as relevant today than it was yesterday. This is but one subject in a sea of subjects that grow this site. You mention that this is a free country but in the same sentence you tell people that they should get out if they don’t like it, that is TYRANNY not freedom. In the same sentence you say that this is beating a dead horse and then you jump in and beat the horse more than anyone in one span. Your lack of historical knowledge lets me know you are young so you get a pass on some things but you will be taught some vital lessons here, whether you embrace them or let them go in one ear and out the other will be your choice. Discussing history, current events and the atrocities committed by one group against another is vital in improvement of life for ALL and for prevention. You would like to leave the past in the past….So I guess we should stop teaching about the Holocaust? WWll or the Vietnam War? Maybe we should stop teaching children about Christopher Columbus, who by the way MURDERED 2 MILLION native women and children for nothing more than they were there.
I do want to point out something about Native American brutality and genocide and the American African Holocaust and genocide through slavery. They had one thing in common, can you tell me what that was since you believe that all groups of human beings are the same? They were both brutalized by the white man and both are being oppressed and brutalized by white culture to this very day….Gotta go Human.
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One more thing Human From Earth…
“Fact is all colors have done something to another color at some point!”
Can you please give me ONE example of Africans or Black people committing brutality against white culture as a whole? Please tell me how Blacks have wronged whites, I am dying to hear this one?
Maybe you can tell me how Native Americans have wronged whites?
Did the Chinese oppress white people? Did Chinese men of power enslave the white man and get free labor as they built the American railroad system with their bare hands.
Hell this country was not built by white men or white people, this country was built on the backs of Blacks, Chinese, Mexican and Native American. All the white man did was built his bank account on the blood and torture of others. The white man delegated, bought politicians and kept slavery around as long as possible.
You have lots to learn yet Human from Earth.
P.S…..Your philosophy is on the right track though. Oneday hopefully the majority of us will accept each person for his/her heart and nothing else. Hopefully oneday we can all fight for our rights and our liberty together as one group of people without division but that day is still a long way off. Right now many of our countrymen and women still suffer on a daily basis from the atrocities our country and our people committed and commit and we have to help put an end to this. It has only been a short 50 years since the laws have changed so that all men are equal but laws do not change hearts. If that was true there wouldn’t be any murders, murder is against the law but there are over 11,000 of them each year in our country. Racism has subsided in some way and in other ways it has gotten worse….It is not your place to speak if you are not affected by such bullshit and brutality so to ask those that are experiencing such horrible torture on a daily basis is arrogant and ignorant, you can go back to your white picket fence and your safe mostly white neighborhood and jump on your soap box but if the other guy did that he would either be shot by a cop or beaten by a gang member….you have no idea!
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@ Human
I did a post on this argument because it keeps coming up. The argument is all about blame, so blame is going to come up. Get real.
As to your race, you are the one bringing it up. I never said you were White – just that you share the moral blindness of many Whites. I know more than enough Whitewashed Black people to know that, sadly, you might not be White.
As to your “We are all human, so you cannot blame Whites” argument, Whites acted as Whites and, to this day, benefit as Whites from their past crimes.
And, if we are all so human, why are you defending Whites and not the Africans who sold slaves? At each step you are trying to get Whites off the hook for past crimes, and only them. Your “human” argument is disingenuous. Even you do not believe in it.
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So sorry to all!!! abagond is 100% right!!! And I am 100% wrong!
And everyone who replied to my post is 100% right with what they said, and I am 100% wrong with what I said! I am so so so sorry!
abagond,
Please go back to my first posting on here dated:Tue 18 Aug 2015 at 10:45:00.
And explain your reply to that post only.
I have been accused of protecting one race from another!
And I am hiding my color!
If you are right in suggesting I am white from a few words here allows me to presume you are black!
If we read my first post, and for example purpose agree I am black and you are white. Where in that post do I protect whites over blacks???
I blamed both colors there, past and present!
I only suggested that both whites and blacks take a view of another color that is not black or white and apply the out come to their own race!
My post is in line with the topic you posted, as I agree there is no excuse for it.
But the replies to my post from all who replied used the same excuses that your post said was not acceptable!
Yes you are right, if you stole my car I would be upset with you and you only!
Yes I would talk about it! And yes I will get over it and stop talking about it!
But I don’t think my entire color people would pursue your entire color people for something you did to me!
This is true and really did happen to me ——-> Friend and I were outside friends house talking, when black car pulls up. Four Black males with LOADED guns, get out of car, and mug both of us at gun point! Friend was able to get away by throwing objects in hands at them! I had no chance of getting away as two of them had guns drawn on me before other two could draw guns on friend! The two that drew on me placed me execution style on the ground with one gun off right side of my face/head for round (if shot) to be able to exit left side/rear of head above shoulder! The other gun shoved point blank and dead square center to back of my head! Where friend and I lived at that moment has a law that if one person just makes a suggestion of death to another person, that is considered a death threat, and is a felony with attempted murder charge! At the very least the person who made the suggestion, will be taken into custody, booked, and held for minimum of 30 days, NO BAIL!
I don’t know what the charge would be for armed robbery, and loaded gun to head should be enough to suggest nothing less than attempted murder!
Does this now allow me and my race to hold accountable the entire black race, not only from then but till the end of time too?
What about my friend?
Oh BTW friend was black!
And in NO way do I feel I am entitled to speak ill of or hold accountable the entire black race for the actions of four black males with guns!
I did not bring race to this post!
The topic did! FACT!
I did NOT CREATE OR POST TOPIC!!! FACT!!!!
If anything I tried keeping race out!!! FACT!
Why do you think I said “HUMAN RACE” ?????
There is NOT ONE race on this planet today that is NOT of THE HUMAN RACE FIRST!!!! FACT!
All I did was try to strip away all barriers to put all of us on a level playing field!!!
My race is the HUMAN RACE! And we support HUMAN RIGHTS!
We are for EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL HUMANS!
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@Human From Earth
You are not wrapped tight are you?
You are basically saying ignore other evidence to me trying to protect whites and focus on the posts where I am not. *rolls eyes*
Even in your recent post it is blacks do this this this. I can provide anecdotal of whites do this this this. If you were genuine in the slightest you would be able to it for both, but notice when it comes to telling the bad you always choose a situation with the black guy? That is no mistake and very telling to your true mindset.
“Does this now allow me and my race to hold accountable the entire black race, not only from then but till the end of time too?”–No, because those guys did not enslave you, they did not engage in repeated systematic racism that kept you down, and they likely did not target you because you were white. If they met you now I highly doubt they would remember you and they did not commit the crime and was let off the hook.
“I did not bring race to this post!”—No one said you brought race to the post, but no one asked YOUR race. You deceitfully kept claiming in your post to me and kiwi that everyone keeps trying to assign a race to you. Not a soul said a thing about your race. You kept dragging that out as if you were waiting on someone to assign you a race so you could say “see I told you so.”
Let me state this plainly. NO ONE CARES WHAT RACE YOU ARE.
If I missed anything sorry. The Bs in your post is blinding.
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@ Human
I never suggested you were White.
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Abagond never said Human was white.
But at least when Human told his story
It does suggest that the race he is identifying with is not black. It could be one of the purple or polka-dotted ones.
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@Human on Earth…….
“So sorry to all!!! Abagond is 100% right!!! And I am 100% wrong!
And everyone who replied to my post is 100% right with what they said, and I am 100% wrong with what I said! I am so so so sorry!”
Apology accepted…
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@Human on Earth: As the Budweiser Advertising commercial slogan says “This Bud’s For You ” This thread post is for you.
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All. Having read through some of the comments, I commend you for your interactions with Human. I could be wrong but his/her responses read very troll-like. I don’t have that kind of energy to engage and play along but hats off to you guys.
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@bygodsloveandgrace
People like human always preach that love one another, we are all humans bs, but if you let them talk long enough that show their true colors. To avoid the bs on other forums I simply ask them a question and if they deflect then I know I they don’t want a serious conversation.
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@shrinalr… I definitely see your perspective. Honestly the older I get I can’t stand the intentional deflectors and attention seekers. On the other hand I enjoy your and other’s responses for the people who find abagond’s blog and think the same way. The comments certainly provide great food for thought..
As I think about this thread, it amazes me how some just don’t want to admit the cruelty of chattel slavery AND its residual affects that are still felt today.
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To all.
I ask this even handed question. Or two.
How should the issue of African bondage have been dealt with in the first place, and when?
Second, how should the “residual affects” be dealt with?
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The point I was trying to make.
On this topic, that both whites and blacks tend to leave out the point of view of a people that were here long before them!
My heritage dates back to over 11,000 years on this land!
If there is any entitlement due, it is to my people!
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@Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.
In your free time scroll up, reread the hundreds of comments where your questions have likely already been answered. Anything else?
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@Human From Earth
You are still not ON topic you are on YOUR topic. If you scroll through abagond’s post you will find plenty on Native Americans and their views, so save the melodramatic bs for those people who write history books and leave your heritage out.
Furthermore you were not worried about your heritage or their entitlements in any of the posts you submitted above.
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This human (being) is a white racist, who next, will try convince us he has Cherokee ancestors. After trying to bamboozle us with his vacuous nonsense, he can’t help himself, and pulls up not one, but four phantom Black assailants. And has a Black friend to boot. At first, he was colour-blind, now he can see.
It is white humans that wiped almost all the Original humans off the face of the earth. It is white humans who still treat the Original humans like dirt. The white humans showed no heart then and they show no heart now.
It is white American humans that enslaved kidnapped African humans. White humans got rich off their suffering. White humans showed no heart then and they show no heart now.
White human beings show no heart on The First Human Beings land and for The First Human Beings’ and African Americans’ suffering.
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I left out my heritage, and approached this topic from the stand point of: despite the color of ones skin, we are all human! At the response of some here, it is suggested that human race is of only one color! Human race is made up of all colors! And as HUMAN we are all responsible as HUMANS! Until we choose to see this, we will never advance as a species! And there will NEVER be WORLD PEACE! There was only one reply to my post that sort of got what I was saying! The day is coming where despite color or history, we will need to come together as one to enable our species (HUMAN) to continue living on this planet! I don’t think we will be ready when that day comes! It would mean despite the past we would have to forgive our enemies! For humans to treat humans as we have is WRONG! A view and point that has been over looked by many who have posted on here for the mere reason of color of skin! The color of our skin does not prevent us from being human, or give any entitlement to anyone! This planet did not come with a set of keys, or ownership papers!
there should only be two categories: 1 Human 2 Male or Female!
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@Jimmy
“To all.
I ask this even handed question. Or two.
How should the issue of African bondage have been dealt with in the first place, and when?
Second, how should the “residual affects” be dealt with?”
sharinalr pretty much answered your questions. Definitely a good starting point.
Good luck to you.
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@ Human
This is not a new argument. White people do it all the time: by “not seeing colour”, they do not have to “see” the racism that shapes the US, either now or in the past. This is what you are doing. It sounds “neutral” and “fair”, even “noble” or “high-minded”, but it is in effect a racist argument because it only benefits Whites, by allowing them to hold onto their ill-gotten gain. By remaining blind to racism, it allows racism to go on.
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I can see there is some communication problem between “Human” and everyone else, but he is not helping it by using terms like “what humans do to humans” (thus making it colourblind) or throwing grenades like suggesting that blacks think blacks lives matter only if non-blacks are doing the killing.
If he has a point, it will get lost after dropping bombs like those.
I don’t think his point is purely self-serving as some have suggested. It is just poorly communicated on the one hand, and ignores (or at least discounts) the viewpoint of the other side.
Whites (and I mean the social political force of “white” in the USA, not a particular individual white person) committed 2 BIG crimes (and a lot of not quite as big crimes albeit still bad) for which they have never fully acknowledged, atoned, or make reparations for – the taking of the land and removing the people from it and the forcible removal of people from elsewhere to work that land involuntarily. To reduce it to something that “humans” did to other “humans” takes something out of the enormity and severity and culpability of those crimes. There is nothing wrong with saying that whites did those crimes and many whites feel guilty about it, but perhaps for their psychological well-being in this cognitive dissonance dilemma, they have to make up stories or deflect to broken record arguments (eg, Arabs traded slaves, Africans sold their own, etc.).
Blacks, on the other hand, frame the argument about what whites did to them. That is not wrong per se, and it is indeed about that, but it is not just about that. Whites did things to non-blacks as well, and blacks do things to other people (blacks, whites, non-black non-whites) but the argument from a black perspective is never framed in that way. Human from Earth tried to rephrase it as something that humans do to other humans, but without putting it in perspectives, he might as well drop bombs on this blog.
I also sometimes have problems with framing the narrative purely into what whites do to blacks. For example, in Abagond’s posts about how to talk to his kids about race, it was purely about what whites do to blacks and how to survive that predicament. I thought it was good to bring up, but left a lot out. For example, many blacks do a lot of things that are harmful to other people’s identity and well-being too. One thing I see blacks do often is the compulsive need to enforce the one drop rule, as though their personal identity and integrity depended on it. For example, when I saw triracials (black/white/Indian) in my high school who had always lived apart from whites and blacks decide to declare their American Indian identity publicly, the biggest most scathing backlash came from blacks.
Whites are constantly reinforcing white supremacy, but many blacks are try to reinforce prior existing racial structures as well (including ones that I think are not benevolent). For me to make sense of this sometimes, I also *might* tell myself that this is stuff that “humans” do.
On the other hand, I don’t think it is right to change the narrative into just what humans do to other humans. That might be true (in the vague, general sense), but it is not the most practical way to view it for it to be of help to most people.
So, I would summarize
– whites should stop using fake and morally bankrupt arguments (eg, Africans sold their own) to deflect or derail any argument about the serious crimes committed in the USA. They should acknowledge the severity and willfulness of those crimes and show a willingness to atone and make some reparation for it and not just try to cover up guilt with rational explanations.
– blacks should not solely frame the narrative into something that whites did to blacks. Yes, it is something that whites did to blacks, but it is not just about that. “Human” is partially correct to suggest that framing it that way leaves a lot out. But reframing the narrative into something that “humans” did to other “humans” also leaves a lot out.
We all frame the narrative to fit our personal and world view. I hope that whites can listen to understand why their world view and narrative makes many blacks cringe, or even feel disgusted. But, on the other hand, the way that some blacks frame the narrative can create discomfort in others, even in those who would otherwise want to be allies. I am not asking anyone to reframe their narrative to fit someone else, only to understand that the narrative is a framed one, and there are other ways of looking at it too. It is not quite so “black” and “white”.
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taotesan
This human (being) is a white racist, who next, will try convince us he has Cherokee ancestors. After trying to bamboozle us with his vacuous nonsense, he can’t help himself, and pulls up not one, but four phantom Black assailants. And has a Black friend to boot. At first, he was colour-blind, now he can see.
It is white humans that wiped almost all the Original humans off the face of the earth. It is white humans who still treat the Original humans like dirt. The white humans showed no heart then and they show no heart now.
It is white American humans that enslaved kidnapped African humans. White humans got rich off their suffering. White humans showed no heart then and they show no heart now.
White human beings show no heart on The First Human Beings land and for The First Human Beings’ and African Americans’ suffering.
—————————————————————————————————-
The assailants are not phantom, as the evidence is in police evidence!
My friend was my girl friend at that time who has sadly passed away!
There is not a day where I don’t think of her and miss her!
She had gone through a lot that year!
Her father passed, an almost fatal car accident, her dogs stolen then returned after posting reward just to have both stolen again! Due to heavy snow earlier in that year, her steel made carport collapsed just seconds after she had been under it, had she been under it, it would have killed her and her dogs! The mugging was the last thing other than an earthquake we had in the area. It was the mugging that she had the most trouble with! After we were mugged I pursued them in an attempt to get plate # of car. When I caught up to them they took off, when I closed the gap and was getting close to being able to read tag on car they opened fire striking my truck! Girl friends nephew was and currently is police officer. We were informed that 2 of the (phantom) assailants were shot and killed while committing the same crime just a few blocks from where we lived a few weeks later! They were killed while engaging the police in gun fire!
I still have the police report, and the obituary of my friend!
If someone said to me or anyone who knew her, that we could have her back on the condition that the two (phantom assailants) who also lost their lives would be given life too. I and all who knew her would say yes! That is who she was and is what she would have wanted if she were still here today!!!
She and I have the same views on this and as a youths corrections officer, was the message she tried to teach to all young people she met while at her job!
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That there is no race but the human race is just like i don’t see color i am color blind nonsense. It is a deflection tactic pure and simple. Why do the dominant culture always tell black people this was so long ago and i had nothing to do with slavery. Stop bringing up the past. They don’t tell the Jewish people to forget about the Holocaust. Being too cowardly or having feelings of guilt leads to the deflection tactic that we as black American hear on a daily basis. Will they (whites) every grow a spine and have this discussion? Probably not. It’s like former AG Eric Holder said “Too cowardly.” And this Human From Earth poster is just one of many who posted a bunch of b.s. not buying any of that horse manure that he was trying to sell.
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@Mary
These days whites will bring up slavery and dictate the narrative of it. Human was real quick to pull out the black assailant, yet still wants to convince everyone “We are all human.”
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jefe,
Thank you! Yes I see where I made mistakes! I was trying to just shed some light on the fact that as different as our skin color is, we tend to over look that we are all also the same! But I was also just trying to state this as quick and simple as possible! My health prohibits some physical abilities!
I said what I said because there are some post on here that would suggest that the entire white race as a whole be eliminated or pay as a whole!
(NOT BY ANYONE WHO REPLIED TO MY POST! TO BE CLEAR!)
My life learnings school, parents, heritage taught me that it was not an entire race as one that has done this or is part of it today! As I have white friends too!
As this to some sounds justified, it is to be just as guilty as the ones we are speaking of! Oh the land of my people has yet to be returned to us as part or whole!
——————————————————————————————————-
Abagond,
Thank you for last reply!
Sorry I cannot continue at the moment, due to health!
But have said for years US government needs to change!
But it will take all Americans to join together to make this happen!
I don’t mean change as much as I mean overturned!
I have lived in Washington DC. Problem not Washington, as it is the people sent by each state to Washington! Washington does NOT have representation!
But are required to pay Fed tax! Not fair!
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^^^ And here we have more deflection and a mischaracterization of what commenters actually said. This is a classic example of why things don’t change. You have to sift through so much clutter and never actually have a real conversation about slavery, white supremacy and current societal constraints.
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@bygodsloveandgrace
I am a firm believer that reading while white should be a medical diagnosis.
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lol sharinalr…. You may be on to something.
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@Human
Sorry to hear about some sudden health issue, but it will sound really fake to the readers here if you bow out on this pretext after dropping so many bombs here.
I might have been wrong about some of my interpretations, but don’t reframe my argument to fit your narrative. For example, I did not say this, you did.
We are not all the same. To put it that way, especially on this blog, is reframing it in a self-serving way. People here have a right to call you out on that. Human nature may be similar, but the system of white supremacy may affect people quite differently. Humans will experience a system in widely different ways. You should not frame the narrative into your perspective while shutting out the narratives of others.
Expect to be called out for that and rightfully so.
But conversely, framing the narrative as “what whites did/do to me”, while not wrong per se, is also a very limited frame. I am not saying that frame should be discarded (by all means no), but it makes it difficult to discuss or examine other aspects, e.g., how certain aspects of THAT frame reinforce the original white supremacy system and the impact that it has on other people’s narratives.
It is not folly to bring up points such as in the USA, blacks are still largely here, while indigenous people largely are not. As Ta-Nehisi Coates brought up in the following interview about the case for reparations
(http://billmoyers.com/episode/facing-the-truth-the-case-for-reparations/)
one thing that makes it easier to admit the Holocaust yet deny the enduring effects of slavery and Jim Crow is the fact that the victims of the former are largely no longer here. On the other hand, both whites and blacks tend to skip over the various ethnic cleansings and genocides that occurred on the American continents. Most of those people, are well, gone. The reparation for that would be a very different thing.
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@ swank: Comment deleted for use of moderated language.
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Sorry Abagond,
But comments from most here and the constant picking apart, twisting, and spinning here teaches nothing, or allows anyone to learn anything even if what they say is wrong or misinterpreted!!!!
Even an apology directed to you, is picked apart twisted and spun at the benefit of others here!
Sorry I did not see where I had to inform entire forum of my age, race, sex, health, financial status button anywhere on here!
I had health issues when I came here, and they continue to get worse by each day! I don’t want anyone’s pity and don’t recall asking! (jefe)!
And if it is so important, I am all three, Black, Indian, and White!
Oh and I know how to do this! —–> Someone will doubt, pick apart, and spin that one as well!!!! (jefe?) (sharinalr?) (bygodsloveandgrace?) (Mary Burrell?)
(taotesan?) (William the Conqueror?) (Kiwi?) (king?) pick away!!!!!!!
I did admit I did NOT READ EVERY POST!
All anyone needed to do is refer me to such a post that had mentioned what I said in my first post!!! But NOOOOOOOOO!
Any American Indians care to answer this? because of tan skin color what color are you first thought of when in an all black neighborhood?
You are considered WHITE! BASED ON COLOR OF SKIN!
My brother and I have lived in an all black community, We never mentioned our mixed culture. Thought we might have to when we first moved there! But we did make a point to get to know all of them (3 streets and 2 apartment buildings!) and found it did not matter! They looked past color of our skin and accepted us for who we were, not our skin color! Some even commented I was black man in body of white skin! If ONLY THEY KNEW!
But also saw a post somewhere here that no one of indian, or white race to help any blacks!
When we moved into that neighborhood I took out a loan to buy my first home = townhouse. We knock on doors introduced our selves and got to know the community. Started asking what community wanted, and went to work making it happen! It took local government, and police meetings with the community to make it happen! Most of the people who owned their homes when we moved there still do today! (some have passed on and left their children their homes!)
There was a lot of black on black crime when we moved there!
With help of the community we found where the biggest problem was and as a community we made it go away!
As of today it is the safest neighborhood in S.E.Washington, D.C. today!
When we moved there, there were 3-7 crimes per week! When we moved and to this day it is none!
This is only one of many things I have done to help that community!
I also started a bikes for kids program, for children who did not have bikes to get bikes! Those bikes provided at my expense! And to this day I have not asked for one dime in return! nor will I !
I also helped a neighbor who took on 3 of her nieces kids with money, food, and presents for Christmas and birthdays and helped her gain custody of these children because their mother was a druggie with an abusive bf/babies daddy that she would not leave because he supplied her the drugs!!!
I can continue all night, week, month, year(s) if anyone wants!
I continue to keep in touch with my friends there! My girlfriends death is why I moved!
Oh I forgot the financial! I took out over $300,000.00 (includes home purchase of $200,000.00) loans, ran up over $50,000.00 credit cards for the benefit of that neighborhood. Just to declare bankruptcy! I was never rich never had money, and worked my ass off 17hrs a day for a $40,000 per year job to get what little I had just to loose it!
And as dumb as it may sound to many of you here, I would do it 1000 times again! As you may never know the joy it has brought me getting to know so many people that I call my friends, and know they now live in a better place because we came together as one!
Oh health very difficult typing now and started at 7:pm is now 12: midnight!
before problems could knock this out in minutes!
EVERY THING I HAVE SAID HERE IS TRUE AND CAN BE PROVEN!
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@ Human,
If it makes any difference to you, I am a native of SE Washington, DC (Anacostia) and grew up in southern PG county where I went to school with the mixed black/white/Indian people of southern Maryland (The current leader of the Cedarville band of Piscataway Indians was my high school schoolmate and I just met with her last month). That is why I brought up how I remember how scathingly mean and hostile the blacks were when those people publicly declared their American Indian heritage. Blacks seem just as compelled to enforce the one drop rule, if not more than whites (They do it on this blog a lot too). Just last month, I went on a fact finding trip across southern Maryland to find out more about the history of the native peoples and what happened to the people claiming to be descendant from them and their current state of affairs. Even now, although they have affirmed their Native American heritage, many still find themselves at the margins between black and white and many of them moved out of their communities and elect to realign themselves socially with either whites or blacks instead of Indian.
IF only they could be just “Human”.
But, as you indicate that others missed your point, you also missed theirs. You point of view is not necessarily wrong, but in order to communicate it, you must relate it to the audience point of view.
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@Human From Earth
Your health issues must include vision problems.
“h and I know how to do this! —–> Someone will doubt, pick apart, and spin that one as well!!!!”—Or they will just say they don’t care like they have been doing and you ignoring. You make it an issue to bring up personal things about you. No one asked you anything about yourself, but as soon as something says something about a white person you go crazy. You are basically giving yourself away to who you identify as without us doing much else but listening to you do it.
“All anyone needed to do is refer me to such a post that had mentioned what I said in my first post!!!”—Here is my response to your first post. https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/africans-sold-their-own-people-as-slaves/#comment-292120
You didn’t like the responses so you responded again. Which allowed for us to respond to your second post and so on. You could have stopped at anytime and avoided responses.
” because of tan skin color what color are you first thought of when in an all black neighborhood?”—Actually you are either light skinned or Hispanic.
You should ask yourself why and the point of listing a good deed. A person who does a good deed from the heart and with sincerity does not need to boast about it. It does not matter if it is true and can be proven because it proves what?You help black people. Get in line with the others.
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MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC: Human of Earth.
Reread the post. It is NOT ABOUT HIM. Or his race. Or his health. Or the Black people who did bad things to him. Or his dear departed friend. Or where he and his brother lived. NOTHING LIKE THAT. NOT EVEN CLOSE.
Going forward I am deleting ALL posts, including his, that bring up ANY personal details about him. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Those who REPEATEDLY get their comments deleted will be put on MODERATION. Those who try to get around said moderation will be BANNED.
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@ Human
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I thought the point of the post thread was how whites deflect from talking about slavery by using saying something like “Well Africans sold their slaves too.” But i see how Abagond is frustrated about how this post thread has derailed.
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Then what would be considered a correct response or answer from whites when engaging them on this topic if there is one?
What actions are necessary and acceptable that would no longer make this a topic?
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Is it a financial apology, or verbal?
If it is financial then who pays? Whites? States that allowed slavery? Federal government? To who and how much?
An apology? If so then by who?
The topic is blacks sold blacks as slaves. This does not make it right.
But the topic would suggest that all whites globally owned all blacks as slaves.
This is not true.
If it comes to financial payment, then how is a fair way to decide who gets what from who, with out DNA blood testing from the ones that are guilty of these crimes!
And the DNA testing would also not work as tribes reproduced within the tribe, and sold their own.
And incest can be found in a lot of cultures, and continues today.
Is there even a correct answer to this?
And still brings my first post into play.
But even removing my first post, what are the answers you would like to hear?
Seems there is no one correct answer to satisfy all!
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@Human From Earth
That is not what the topic suggests or is even about. You should read the post first. No where in this post does it say All white or All blacks.
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My general question still stands.
Has nothing to do with all or in part.
Has to do with how is this corrected?
What is a correct response from whites on this topic?
Answer please.
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Topic is how whites deflect on topic of slavery.
My question, what is the correct answer that is acceptable from whites?
If there is an apology, then is it verbal, or financial?
Who says it, or how much?
Please try to spin again.
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Abagond, Am I off topic now?
And what is your view on the question I ask?
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Sharinalr,
You have had so much to say, how would you propose to answer this?
Is there even a correct way for whites to not deflect on this subject?
Is there a correct way for whites to deflect the subject?
How would you propose to take corrective actions that would allow this to no longer be a topic in the US?
FYI steer clear of the human topic!
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“My question, what is the correct answer that is acceptable from whites?”
Abagond’s blog isn’t directed at whites. This blog is a collection of his opinions that you can accept or not accept. Their is no anticipated “correct response” expected from white people.
If your smart and keep an open mind you might learn something about yourself.
Some white people come here to troll. Others visit, get offended and offer responses that merely confirm Abagond’s and others observations about how white people think. Whites always ask the same questions and make the same arguments. Their is a universalism to it that becomes apparent when you follow this blog long enough.
Abagond must be a man a great patience. I’d get irritated having to respond to the same arguments by different clueless whites over and over again forever.
I tend to focus my comments towards whites to help clear the confusion from their minds. If they still remain arrogant then I can get dicey.
This blog covers more then race and discusses black culture. In that sense Abagond attempts a safe place, words are monitored and trolls eventually banned.
Its a beautiful blog that has conversations about things that are true. I attempt to keep my comments constructive that build upon the conversation at hand. Some topics are issues that deal with how non whites view each other or are black centric and a white persons opinion would be an interference.
Its like I’m eating at Abagond’s table in his home and so as a guest I attempt to be well mannered.
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@Human From Earth
Your posts are not clear. You say one thing and then turn around and change what you say.
“What is a correct response from whites on this topic?”–Read the post and comment on what the post is about. Period.
Whites use this argument as a way to excuse chattel slavery. It does not excuse it. White people simple need to own up to it. There is no but there is no he or she did it. There is simple they did it and they profited from it.
“How would you propose to take corrective actions that would allow this to no longer be a topic in the US?”—I don’t know maybe work on getting rid of racism. Maybe make change that reverses the effects of slavery.
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Comments are closed. Please go to the repost:
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